Overwatch: Out of Time
by monthefratellis
Summary: For Jesse McCree, it seems all roads lead to Route 66. With Tracer's chronal accelerator on the fritz, and Talon hot on their heels, can the pair somehow survive the ghosts of Deadlock Gorge?
1. Try The Coffee

Hey, guys, how's it going? I finally got a chance to play Overwatch for two days, and I had a lot of fun. I was inspired to write a story yesterday, but I'm literally leaving the country tomorrow, so I've been rushing to churn out some words. Hope you like what I have so far.

* * *

"Sniper!" was the last thing McCree heard before he found himself in the dirt, contemplating the blazing heat of the sun looking down disapprovingly on his still form. Beside him, the girl was down, the chronal accelerator on her back belching sparks into the air. The wind was knocked out of him. The sniper had caught him unawares. The girl had paid the price.

McCree swore, rolling onto his feet. He fired six wild shots in the general direction of the sniper, whom he reckoned was posted up somewhere across the gorge that snaked along Route 66. He must've gotten lucky, as he was able to throw the girl over his shoulder before the second—and what should have been, last—shot came whizzing by. He had her slung over his shoulder now, hurrying as best he could down the baking asphalt, the sound of his spurs jangling louder than him breathing, the girl light like that, practically nothing in his arms. His fingers had minds of their own, chambering another six rounds into his Peacemaker. On his shoulder, he felt the girl stir, reaching for her own peace. Her machine pistol rattled angrily, like a startled Diamondback, but was quickly drowned out by the _BOOMS_ of his revolver, somehow weighty and confident, a voice that made people listen. They cut behind a beat-to-hell pickup dead in the road, the windshield and driver's side window exploding as another one of the sniper's bullets took the truck, a geyser of dust erupt behind them and billowing in the win. Just ahead, he could make out the entrance, big bold letters that said _PANORAMA DINER,_ a derelict fossil that had withered and dried-up after years of misfortune. He'd feel downright nostalgic about his old haunt if a bullet weren't likely to take his head off at the shoulders at any second.

"Keep her suppressed," he grumbled out of the side of his mouth, just now realizing he'd bitten clean through his cigar in the scuffle, spitting out the end of it. The girl grunted in affirmation, producing her pistol's twin in the other hand. She'd just about clocked the sniper's exact location by now, emptying the magazine towards their unseen enemy. Shooting upside-down like that, while they were moving, especially given her guns didn't have that kind of range, was a hell of a feat, but she seemed to have accomplished it well enough, as no superfluous holes sprouted in either one of them. He cleared the last four steps into the diner with a single bound, crashing in through the doors. They hit the ground hard, tumbling through, knocking over the set of rope stanchions standing sentinel beyond the front door. They stayed low, McCree grabbing a bench and lifting it up to barricade the front entrance. Tracer was on her feet now, despite his protests, dipping off to scout the building. Three shots in total came blasting through the northern windows, Tracer hitting the deck. McCree motioned for her to follow him into the kitchen, and they fell through the double doors. What felt like two weeks, but was probably a lot closer to two minutes passed, and the pair found themselves holed behind a rusted cooktop.

"You know this place," Tracer said. It wasn't a question.

"Yeah," he said, counting out how many shells he had left. Twelve. More than enough, he reckoned. He wanted that to be the end of it, but she wouldn't leave well enough alone.

"From your outlaw days, yeah?" No judgment in her tone. Just curiosity.

"The very same." He answered. He said nothing more, and after a moment, she seemed to take the hint.

He didn't talk much about the past. Didn't have all that much to say. He ran guns across the border. Made more money than he knew what to do with, all of it earned with blood and bullets. And he had been _good_ at it too, boasting a rap sheet longer than a country mile. but evidently he had not been nearly good enough. And in a stroke of the Devil's luck, the day Overwatch darkened his door, they offered him a job, instead of a quick drop and a sudden stop. Maybe that's why Overwatch failed, he reckoned. Taking in thieves and murderers instead of shooting them on the spot. Wasn't that long ago the townsfolk used to lynch outlaws like him, not give them a tin star. Even before that, folks would cut the hands off thieves, a fitting punishment and a penance he himself had paid. He opened and closed the fingers of his cybernetic arm. Even after all these years, he could still feel his phantom limb there, as if it were just under the shell of metal, waiting for him. It felt itchy and cramped, and it was all he could do to not pick at the arm like a dog scratching out an old wound. But they didn't make those plastic cones for people.

"Hey, cheer up," Tracer said. He blinked. He'd gotten lost in the past again, it seemed, and she brought him back into the moment. That was kind of her thing, he realized, the nature of her abilities, walking the fine line between past and future. He never gave the girl enough credit.

"Sorry," he admitted.

"You're different now," she said, jabbing him in the arm. He shouldn't have been this easy to read. "You left that life behind you a long time ago. The world needed heroes, and you answered the call. We all did." He sighed.

"Sometimes a man thinks he can leave a part of his life behind him. He can't. It follows him home like a stray dog." He'd been all over the world by now, and yet it seemed all roads had led him back to here, back to this moment, back to this diner, where all of it had started. He would have no more of it.

McCree risked a peek, inching his head up from behind the ticket counter, where the servers handed off the orders, a few of them still hanging there, never fulfilled. He looked out past the windows, covered in soot and grime, out across Deadlock Gorge, to where the sniper had to have been. He imagined he saw a glint out there, maybe something, maybe nothing, maybe just a flash in the pan. He ducked, and not a hair too soon.

McCree's hat went flying off, and the sound of broken glass and groaning metal filled the room. The shot went over him, punching into the steel freezer door behind the pair, leaving a dent in it the size of his fist. He clicked his tongue, reaching out to scoop up his hat, still nicked and worn from years of wear, but otherwise undamaged. He affixed it to his head, always starting at the front and going backwards, keeping his greasy mop out of his eyes.

"Well, that was a close one, eh?" Tracer asked. He figured he could play it off like he meant to do that, but instead sighed.

"Yup. Damn near took my head off. She's got us pinned."

"That simply won't do," she said, her face suddenly scrunching up, a look he took to mean she was thinking.

"Got a plan?"

"No," she admitted after a few moments. "My chronal accelerator is still heavily damaged, and even with it, I'm afraid Widowmaker has us at a bit of a disadvantage."

"Up a creek, more like," he said, wanting to light another cigar, but not wanting the smoke to give away their position.

"I suppose that is one way of putting it," she said, smiling. "And what about you? What's your plan?"

"Signaled backup already. Supposin' we dig in here. Wait her out."

"How long?"

"An hour? Two?"

"I don't think Widowmaker''s agreeable to let us sit about like this. We might not have the luxury of waiting for backup."

"No, I don't think spider-lady is gonna let us camp out here unmolested," he said, scratching his beard. He didn't like to admit it, but their odds weren't looking so great. He neglected to mention any number of ways Widowmaker could flush them out of the building, like flooding the diner with her toxic gas canisters. And that was just one of her tricks they knew about. She could just as easily have some new ones up her eight sleeves. Hell, she could even go with a more mundane solution and put the building to the torch. He seemed to vaguely remember a propane tank on the opposite side of the diner, hopefully out of her immediate line of sight. If it went fireball, they'd find themselves without cover, easy targets. The girl seemed to read the thoughts writ small across his face, and grew quiet, pensive, which was a bad sign. "Besides," he said, trying out a smile like an off-the-rack jacket, not liking the way it fit. "I thought you liked calling for backup?" He elbowed her playfully, as was apparently the custom, his cyber arm nearly bowling her over, and said "What ever happened to 'cheers, love. The _cavalry's_ here?' " She just looked at him for the longest time, wordless.

"You're making fun of me, love," she said, crossing her arms.

"What makes you say that?" he asked, dialing up the cluelessness.

"Two can play _thayut_ game" she drawled, trading her tea-and-kettle accent for a southern one, only it was a very one-sided trade, and he hoped she kept the receipt.

"No fair," he said. "No makin' fun of my accent." She didn't really have a leg to stand on with that one, he knew, her accent just as bad as his, in its own way.

"What can I make fun of, then?" she asked, undaunted.

"Nothing at all," he shrugged. "I am beyond reproach."

"Does that mean I can't say anything about your tragically western fashion sense?" she asked, grinning.

 _Tragically western?_ He mumbled to himself, almost offended. "Not fashion. Function."

"Oh, really?" she asked, eyes narrowing beneath her orange goggles. "The poncho?"

"Comfortable. Keeps me warm. Keeps dust away."

"The hat?" she asked, trying to make him sweat.

"Keeps the sun out of my eyes."

"The belt buckle?"

"Keeps my pants from falling off. I'd say that's pretty damn functional."

"The spurs?" she asked, smiling impishly. His mouth tightened. She had him there.

"Look cool," he admitted. "Ain't much for riding. Never was."

"So there you have it," she said, trying to stifle a laugh, and not doing a very good job of it. "Consider yourself successfully reproached."

"Two can play at the fashion game," he said, nodding his head to her. "This tragically western cowpoke fails to see how skintight leggings wind up on the battlefield."

"Not _skintight_ ," she insisted, adapting an almost schoolmarm posture. "Formfitting. Allows freedom of movement, which is very important."

"Don't offer much in the way of protection, though," he mused. Even he wore a breastplate under his poncho. That was another one he'd lifted direct from Eastwood, but she didn't have to know that. His ears pricked up. There was a stirring outside the diner, something just at the edge of his hearing. Tracer leaned in, voice hushed.

"Do you hear that?"

"Yes," he said, reflexively holding up a finger of silence.

"What is it?" Metal whirring, Lurching footsteps. Something heavy. _Trouble._

"Looks like she's rounded up a posse," McCree said, moving towards the back of the kitchen. Just over the sink was a small window facing out in front of the diner, presumably beyond the sniper's line of sight. Tall as he was, he had to half scramble up over the sink to get a decent view. What he found outside made him swear.

"What is it?" whispered the girl from behind him. He eyed the hunk of metal in front of the diner, an old omnic war machine. A bipedal tank with a high-powered machine gun for an arm and a cannon on its back. He'd seen enough of their kind in the war, knew how dangerous they were. This one in particular.

" _Bastion_ ," he said.

"Bastion?" she asked, incredulously. "I thought he was one of us now. A good guy?"

"Maybe somebody shoulda told him that," he said, watching as the robot transformed before his eyes. It folded over at the waist as if on a hinge, driving its feet into the ground for support. The giant cannon on its back fell forward as it locked into position. Slowly, the barrel began to spin, winding up for the pitch.

"Get down!" was all he could manage as the sound of gunfire filled the air. The bullets tore into the diner, chewing up everything they hit, the building exploding into shards and slivers of glass, metal, and plastic. They were on the ground now, as flat as they could make themselves. No more than two feet away, McCree had to scream at her to be heard.

"FOLLOW ME!" he roared, taking the girl by the arm. Whether she chose to or not, he would never know, as he yanked her hard across the room. He came to a shelf against the back wall, flinging it down where it crashed against the dusty linoleum floor. Behind it was a door, all but hidden from sight. He kicked it open, and the door flew off its hinges, sailing down into the blackness below. Without thinking, he followed it blindly into the darkness, the bullets heavy in the air, like hornets whizzing past his ears. Where the staircase should have been, his feet found nothing. He fell into the darkness, bracing himself, Tracer in tow.

The drop hadn't been far, two seconds' worth, but he hit the ground poorly, landing in a heap of broken, rotten wood. _That would be the staircase_ , he realized. Tracer followed suit, landing on top of him, driving her knee into his chin.

"Oof" he grunted, tasting the blood in his mouth. Above them, the sound of gunfire stopped abruptly.

"Are you hurt?" Tracer hissed, feeling her way around the dark.

"Nothing but my pride," he answered, feeling out for the lighter in his pocket. It _clinked_ to life, and the pair found themselves in what looked at first an old basement, long forgotten.

"What is this place?" she asked.

"Storeroom. Built into a small cave system. Should get us up and outside into a pass between the cliffs." He brushed the dirt off himself, scanning around the room for anything usable, but it seemed all the hardware had been scavenged years ago. He passed a cobweb hung in the corner bigger than his head, counted a pair of beetles and other crawlies entombed there, a graveyard of desiccated husks. The symbolism was not lost on him.

"I suppose I don't need to ask how you know about this place," Tracer said, more to herself than him.

"I suppose not," he said, sounding more annoyed than he intended to. In another life, the gang had run guns through the town, and the network of caves beneath it had come in handy. The owner, a woman named Debbie Shiner, let them use the basement as they needed, a favor to McCree. He'd personally dealt with her husband, a real piece of work, and she had been grateful. Standing there now, in the long picked-clean wreck of the diner, he couldn't help but feel guilty for what he'd done, as if he'd repaid her generosity with ruin. "We need to keep moving," he said, finally.

* * *

More coming at some point. Hope you like it.


	2. A Walk Down Memory Lane

Hey, everyone! I'm so sorry I've made you guys wait, but I've been stuck on a ship these past two months with no way to update the story. But, I did put pen to paper in the meantime, and have some fresh story for you guys! Thank you so much for all the support! Enjoy!

* * *

They emerged out into the harsh light of day after two bends and another flight of stairs, intact by some small miracle. McCree wondered if he was pushing his luck now, expecting gunfire to come down from the ridges of the sunbaked gorge, a firing squad of Talon soldiers dug in behind the rocks like coiled rattlers waiting to spring. Still, it was suicide to stay there, he knew. A stationary target was an easy target. He'd just as soon make the black widow woman work for her kill, the pair of them flies in her web, the echoes of their struggles only making it worse, like dinner bells ringing as they squirmed to break free.

He spared another moment to scan the topography; the narrow canyon pass before them offered little protection, plenty of opportunities for an enterprising soldier to get the high ground over them, put a bullet where it didn't belong. He searched the banks of his memory, gently blowing the dust off an old tome ragged with age, and flipped to a dogeared page full of charts and figures, the old byways and cave systems of Deadlock Gorge he'd explored in his youth. If his memory rang true, it was about a mile and a half before the two would come upon the mouth of a well-hidden cave tucked into the side of the cliff. If they followed the system, it would dump them out at the edge of the town proper, a route that had come in handy in his smuggler days. A route that could potentially save their lives … if they weren't ambushed by gunmen first. But, they couldn't go backwards. And they sure as hell couldn't sit there and hope the bad guys forgot about them. He grit his teeth.

"Let's move," he said, doing his best to sound confident. He would have settled for _determined_. He thought he sold it well, all things considered. _On the bright side_ , he thought, _at least there's a chance some lucky bastard will kill us first, deny her the pleasure_. The thought almost made him smile. "Town's thataway," he said, nodding. Tracer followed wordlessly, twin pistols raised warily, eyes scanning above them for potential threats. She evidently shared his concerns.

They were both on edge as they went, seeing phantom gunmen behind every rock, every stirring of dust in the wind. They turned a bend in the pass, and McCree could almost see their killers in his head, a dozen of them, acrid black gunpowder smoke blanketing the land like some Civil War battlefield, eventually parting to reveal what was left of their still bodies. They rounded the turn with no fanfare. McCree realized he had been holding his breath. He let the hammer down gingerly on his revolver, satisfied they were as safe for the time being as two people people trying to outrun a crosshair could be. It was some time later, perhaps ten minutes when Tracer finally spoke up, breaking the silence that hung over them like a lead veil.

"How are you on ammo?" she asked him. He didn't need to be a mind reader to intuit that she was trying to reckon their odds of survival.

"Twelve bullets," he answered, her unenthusiastic reaction seeming to suggest she figured the odds were on the low-end, perhaps barely into the double digits. Conservatively speaking, he placed Talon's numbers on this op at about thirty, plus a single airship they'd briefly encountered at sunrise. Even if he were able to convince them all to share two-to-a-bullet, there still wouldn't be enough to go around. If ever there was a six-gun magician, it was him, but even he couldn't get on stage and perform without his props. "Two flashbangs," he added, seeing if that would cheer her up. It didn't.

"It seems I'm faring a little better than you, then," she said. She opened up her leather service jacket, which she had opted to wear despite the dry heat, and revealed four magazines lining the inside, as well as two of her infamous sticky bombs, timed charges that could be detonated remotely, capable of sticking to most surfaces and packing a serious wallop. McCree couldn't help but think about her ratty old flight jacket, and the tragic history it represented. He couldn't help but think about the device she wore, her literal lifeline to the world, damaged and still every now and then letting out a spark or two.

"How's your ... uh, chronal … ?" he said, not sure how to broach the subject. He preferred to speak with his Peacemaker. In the matter of wordplay he was less than adroit.

"My _chronal accelerator_ ," she said enunciating the words like a countess, "seems to be in working order presently. As long as I can refrain from using it until Winston gives me the okay, I think we'll be right as rain." There was a reason she said ' _we_ ,' McCree knew, the device the only thing preventing the girl from tearing asunder the thin fabric of space-time, which he suspected was as dangerous as it sounded. _Call it an occupational hazard_.

"By 'okay,' you mean not slipping in and out of time?" he asked, considering it a pretty large point of clarification.

"Yes," she answered. "I'd like to avoid that, thanks." He detected a little bit of worry in her voice. He hadn't meant to put a doomsday scenario in her head, and yet he had done it expertly. McCree's face grew solemn, gravely serious.

"All I'm saying is, if you do decide to start floating through time, maybe pick us up a couple of dinosaurs on the way back?" Tracer looked at him wordlessly, head cocked quizzically like a dog's. "Doesn't even have to be that big. Like a raptor or two, you know?" Despite what Morrison had told him, years ago, McCree could be funny every now and then.

Tracer laughed. Though he was pleased with himself, he didn't smile.

"How about a T-Rex?" she offered. "Would that do the trick?"

"Too big a target," McCree said, not missing a beat. "Would catch every bullet they sent its way. Though, there _is_ the fear factor … " he explained, thinking for a moment. "Better make it a pterodactyl. Air superiority. I can ride it into battle, if needs be, rain down some fire."

"You said it yourself," she retorted. "You can barely ride a horse. You'll fall to your death, and I'll be the one stuck scraping you up"

"Pterodactyls is different," McCree explained. "And I was only being modest earlier."

"Sure," she said, laughing again, as they kept walking, one foot after the other.

…

…

…

"There must be some reason Bastion attacked us," she said after a few minutes of quiet reflection, evidently theorizing. He wondered if she felt betrayed by the machine. He didn't; you had to trust in something to be betrayed.

"I'm sure there's a reason," he said., picturing the diner as a wave of bullets swept through it. He'd started to come down now off his adrenaline spike, noticing dozens of small cuts he'd received from flying shrapnel, all of them crying out for his undivided attention, _Souvenirs_ , he thought. "Don't mean it's a good one."

"Then give me your bad reason," she said, her tone suggesting she already knew what he was going to say, and didn't much care for it. At its core, the robot was fundamentally broken. It was a murder machine, and nothing more. He'd seen enough of what Bastion's unit had been capable of in the war. His recent, "benevolent" behavior was, as far as he was concerned, nothing but a malfunction, a series of file corruptions, a deviation from his original programming, RE: _KILL ALL HUMANS_. If anything, trying to fill the two of them up with holes earlier had been a return to form. He said none of these things.

"Guess Bastion's turned," McCree thought aloud.

"Maybe," Tracer answered. "Maybe not. He didn't seem himself." _Himself_? McCree wondered, almost grabbing the word as a point of contention. He wanted to insist that he _had_ been himself, nothing more than a walking gun, his only purpose to kill and maim. Though he supposed Tracer had spent enough time with the broken bot to see what could be construed (though he suspected the word _misconstrued_ was more apt) as a personality, the bot's series of quirks. One such peculiarity was the machine appeared fond of birds, birds which became uncharacteristically friendly around him, for some unknown reason. The net effect made him resemble somewhat a Disney princess, rather than a killer of men. He feared she was just projecting what she wanted to see on the machine, humanizing it when there was nothing more "there" than a microwave. Only, McCree had never seen a microwave that came equipped with heavy ordnance. He'd never seen a microwave march on a city, torch up a hospital, or cut a nine-year old girl in half with .50 caliber bullets. "His system has been hacked," Tracer suddenly declared, jabbing him with her finger. _Yeah, wouldn't that be convenient?_ She was ever the optimist it seemed.

"S'possible," he admitted, though he didn't think it likely. Her eyes narrowed in annoyance at him. She must've read his thoughts on his face. She'd told him once, he recalled, very long ago, that his famous scowl was a language in itself, every twitch of the lip, wrinkle of the brow, or tightening of the jaw a letter, a word, a sentence. This observation had evidently been correct, as she answered his thoughts.

"If you could simply look past your hate for Omnics, you'd realize I'm correct," she said, scolding him like a schoolmarm. He frowned, wondering what she was reading from it.

 _Hate_ was a strong word. True, he'd been slow to warm up to the Omnics, he could admit. He'd written off most of their race when the war began. He was tempted to blame his upbringing, but it seemed awful convenient. In his years, he'd come to recognize the humanity in Omnics, as ironic as that sounded. Like people, there were good ones and bad ones. And the bad ones had started the war. They called it a revolution; McCree called it a bloodbath. And the bad ones, they had created Bastion. Bastion was no Omnic, but an Omnic's weapon of war. A last-ditch effort to create a weapon to exterminate humanity, a Sherman tank on a Sherman's march to the sea.

 _Hate_ wasn't nearly strong enough a word. He said nothing.

"Think about it," Tracer said, smiling now. "It makes sense."

He thought about it. _It all made sense_. He swore vilely.

" ' _It's possible_?' " she parroted, McCree convinced she was making fun of him now. "It's a foregone conclusion, love!" McCree sighed.

"He's certainly useful," he admitted. "God's perfect murder-machine."

"And … ?" Tracer prompted. She was going to make him say the words, he knew. She was enjoying this.

"And he knows all about us," he said, undeterred. "I imagine he's got a hard drive full of us, our tactics, our skills, our capabilities …" he trailed off, taking a breath, the reality of the situation finally starting to set in. "Where we hang our hats."

"Precisely," she said. "Bastion would make an invaluable asset for our enemies," she said, McCree thinking _of which there are many_. "Why else would he be working alongside Talon? If he'd truly reverted back to his murderous ways, he'd be shooting indiscriminately at Talon, and not just us." She smiled again, clearly pleased with herself and her mastery of logic. It was hard to be angry at her, but McCree made an honest attempt.

"You're right," he said. "Bastion's hacked." Before she could say something else—gloating no doubt—he added "but hacked or not, it doesn't change a damn thing, He'll still kill us dead." His timing couldn't have been more perfect. The sound of a massive explosion carried out from somewhere back in the distance. _The diner_ , he realized. _That'll be the propane tank_. A fitting period to the subject that was Bastion. Tracer's face became screwed up in a frown.

"It changes everything," Tracer said firmly, if not cryptically. He decided to drop the subject.

"I think it goes without saying that we're compromised. Who knows what intel Bastion's provided Talon, even if unwittingly." It was a scary thought. They had only _just_ gotten the band back together. And at this rate, Overwatch was likely to die a second death, only this one much more ignoble and much quicker.

"Try the communicator again," Tracer suggested, his worry in her voice. Their comms had been practically DOA the entire op. They'd only managed a quick distress beacon less than an hour ago when things had gone south, and it had been static ever since. _Jammed, most like_. Didn't help much that they were stuck out here in the boonies to begin with, nothing for miles but desert and rock, broken only by mountains, ravines, and gulches, the dead town of Deadlock Gorge ahead of them now, withered and dried-up along the asphalt riverbed of Route 66. If they died out here, it was likely no one would ever know, only their bleached-white bones left to tell their stories, the rest of them picked clean by buzzards and scorpions, coyotes and mountain cats.

He tried the communicator again.

" _CG, Woody. Downtown, downtown, downtown. How copy_?" he spoke into the headset, depressing the bud in his left ear. Static. He kept at it for a minute. Nothing but white noise, his mind creating voices where there were none, all of them seeming to be wailing and moaning something awful, the voices of the damned, many of the voices familiar, the ghosts of Deadlock Gorge, many of them he had sent there personally. And, if he closed his eyes and listened real hard, he was almost sure he could make out his own voice there, inviting him to join them. He silenced the communicator, swearing. Tracer frowned again.

"You're sure Winston received our original distress?" she asked, very prudently. He didn't think it was any stretch at all to say that Tracer didn't want to spend any more time here amongst the desert than he did. That made two of them.

"I'm sure," he said. "He had started to answer when the comms died. "I'm sure he's on his way, but I'm also sure the timing's not gonna be that great."

"Maybe he'd arrive faster if you stopped calling him that terrible name," she scolded him, hands on her hips in matronly disapproval.

"He _loves_ the nickname," he lied, doing his best to sound offended. _CG—Curious George_. Of all McCree's displays of his famous wit over the years, it was this he was most proud of. _On account 'a your a monkey and a scientist_ he had explained drunkenly to the ape-man upon their first meeting. Reyes had got a big hoot out of that, he vaguely remembered. McCree had drank a lot back in those days, but he'd thankfully curtailed the worst of it by now. He'd gotten the name from an old children's book his mother had read to him, in the far-gone days of yore when parents still read to their children. She'd always encouraged his reading, and to this day, McCree was often known to keep a beaten-up paperback handy at most times. It was a strange sentiment to realize he was now older than his mother had ever been. In this way, he felt a strange kinship with the ape-man, the pair of them having more in common than what met the eye. He could still remember the look on the ape-man's face all those years ago. _I'm not 'curious,'_ he said. _I'm inquisitive. And I'm not_ _a monkey_ , he told McCree, jabbing his powerful, meaty fingers into his chest. _I'm a Scientist._ McCree had only laughed, and asked what _Inquisitive Winston_ was drinking, offering to buy him another one. "Besides," McCree retorted. "He calls me _Woody_. Like the toy cowboy. You believe that?"

" _Boys_ ," she sighed disapprovingly. "The lot of you."

"Boys will be boys," he agreed. As the pair walked, the pieces started to fall together in his head, forming a familiar image. They weren't far now, the mouth of the cave only a little ways ahead. The sun was starting to creep up ever higher in the sky, the real heat of the day just starting to settle in.

"The LZ," Tracer said tentatively, after a few minutes of quiet. McCree felt himself bristle in anticipation of what she would say. "Why did you choose it?" she asked, though she damn well knew the answer.

"You know why," he said simply. "It's defensible. I know its layout. It gives us a great vantage point over the town." These were all facts, he knew. But they weren't the reason why he chose the location as their landing zone. In truth, he did know just about everything there was to know about The Cave Inn motel, the floor plans, the entrances and exits, even the hidden ones his gang had used. He''d visited it after-the-fact, memorized its every detail. He'd seen all the crime scene photographs too, long, sleepless nights spent looking at blood splatter, viscera, and gore. No, the real reason was he _had_ to see it again. He didn't believe in fate—truth be told, he didn't much believe in much of anything—but it seemed every road he traveled led him back here, the crossroads of his life, the one night that had irrevocably altered the course of his existence. He said none of this to Tracer, who clearly wasn't buying his explanation.

She knew.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked gingerly, like a cornered ringmaster trying to talk down a lion. He saw her eyes wander, as if she was searching for a painless way to broach the subject. But, there wasn't one. Life was pain, and the show must go on. "The … _incident_?"

He almost sniggered when she used the word _incident_. "Is that what we're calling it now? _Incident_?" he asked, not trying to hide his anger. The girl was taken aback.

"McCree, I didn't mean—"

"—Because I believe the papers all called it a _massacre_ ," he said, almost spitting out the word like some kind of cobra. ' _The Motel Massacre_ ,' to be precise. Seventeen dead. Four wounded. A lucky few went in their sleep, throats slit from ear-to-ear. Some lined up against the wall and shot. Others killed with their boots on, fighting for themselves and their friends. All of them butchered. All of them fathers. Sons. Husbands and best friends and brothers. All of them dead. All of it his doing.

" _Okay_ ," she said, taking the hint. "Sorry, love." McCree sighed, feeling suddenly embarrassed at his outburst.

"Look," he began. "It's not a subject I like revisiting. I didn't mean to bite your head off." The girl half-smiled and he felt a little better.

"Nothing to be sorry about," she said. "How much farther until this cave of yours?" He knew she was changing the subject deliberately, and he thanked her for it.

"Just up ahead," he answered. "It's right—" he would never finish his sentence, however, as the throaty roar of an engine suddenly split the air. They both whipped around to see a large APC pull up hard on the ridge behind them, the driver side front wheel dangling precariously over the edge. Maybe a dozen armed soldiers spilled out, and the last thing McCree heard before the bullets started was a frantic "They're over there!"

They beat feet towards the mouth of the cave, just within eyesight, almost hidden behind a wall of ugly brown scrub, just about the only life that could bloom in this forsaken place. Their attackers were some distance off, which proved to be their saving grace. Their shots were just wide of the mark, kicking up wads of dirt as they sprinted towards the cave. Tracer was the quicker of the two by a considerable margin and made it there first. McCree was only seconds behind her. He watched the mouth grew larger the closer he got, the maw of some great, dark beast trying to swallow him whole. A large, fat bee whizzed past his ear. He was there now, _so close_. The girl was calling out to him now, hand extended, as if she were prepared to yank him inside. He was safe now, he knew.

The last thing he saw before the bullet struck him was Tracer's hand, beckoning him forward, into the darkness.

* * *

Hoped you like it! More on the way. Oh, and in response to a review, it is not my intent to ship Tracer and McCree. Without giving anything away, I paired them together for a very specific reason. Also, as you can see with the motel portion, I'm crafting my own backstory for McCree, which will be explored further and in greater detail.


	3. Holes

Hello, everyone! Sorry for the wait, as always. Hope you enjoy.

*Just a quick note before we start. The Deadlock Gorge I'm writing isn't a 1:1 copy of the ingame map, I'm writing it as being much larger, a ghost town. That being said, major landmarks still exist, just altered to suit the narrative.*

* * *

There was blood in his mouth. Dirt. Someone grabbed him roughly by the shoulders. He understood somehow that he was meant to move and scrambled to his feet, body nearly collapsing under him. Something exploded at his heel like a landmine, showering him with dust. The light vanished, and he found himself in the darkness now, nearly stumbling as the hand yanked him further in. His head was ringing like a church bell, something in his lizard brain telling him to keep moving forward, just ahead _sanctuary_ , _sanctuary_ , _sanctuary_. He became aware now that he had stopped, and someone had him by the collar and was shaking him.

" _Jesse_!" the voice said, and some fouled gear in his brain started turning again.

"I'm good," he said, or thought he said, eyes wide and wild, scanning the dark recesses of the cave, behind every shadow a gun. Her grip on him became rougher, trying to grab his attention.

"We have to keep moving," she said. "They're just outside now, we have to—" She was interrupted by the sound of heavy boots, loud voices in the din, the soldiers hot on their trail.

They'd been found.

"Get down!" Tracer hissed, shoving him backwards into a small alcove cut into the rock. He saw the flash of the detonator materializing in her hand, then nothing at all. Everything went black as a solid wave of force rocketed through the tight passageway, like the wake of an eighteen-wheeler passing them on a highway. The walls shook violently, fragments and shelves of rock and detritus washing down over them, threatening a collapse. They were moving now, sheets of rock crashing down at their heels, feeling their way blind in the darkness as the ceiling gave in. He felt the massive tremors of the collapse shooting through his body, rattling his teeth, disorienting him. When the rumbling finally died down, McCree's eyes adjusted, and he found himself alive, in one piece, and staring at the troubled face of one Ms. Lena Oxton, her face ghoulishly backlit by her damaged device.

"Tell me there's another way out of here," she said to him, managing a smile, her normally pristine teeth stained with soot and dirt.

"Cave opens up further down, spits us right out in the town proper." He shook his head, trying to snap himself back into mental clarity, instantly regretting it at the first stab of sharp pain screaming on the left side of his head. He attempted to raise his prosthetic, and felt instantly that something was off, the synthetic limb damaged and unresponsive. He craned his neck around to see where a high caliber bullet had evidently taken him in the shoulder, and he almost screamed, the sudden pain in his neck like hot pincers. He used his teeth to peel off the calfskin leather glove from his right hand, and tested the area with his fingers, which came back flecked with warm scarlet. Curiously, the scenery around his left ear felt differently than he had remembered it. Though it must have been hard to make out all the lurid details, Tracer watched him in the darkness, mouth covered in shock.

"Are you okay?" she asked him. It was a fair question. He didn't have to dwell particularly long on it, testing the fingers of his prosthesis, finding the arm begrudgingly responding to his impulses after a time, and he managed to slip his glove back on with little difficulty. The bullet had winged him high in the left shoulder, where the prosthetic was wired into his nervous system, leaving a huge gash in the metal. The sheer force of the shot, combined with the shrapnel that had splintered off, had evidently been enough to take most of his ear off.

"Looks that bad, huh?" he asked, trying to crack a smile. He supposed the gesture, when coupled with his missing ear, came off less than reassuring.

"You're bleeding," she rasped. "You're _hurt_." It wasn't the first time he'd been wounded on the job, and it likely wouldn't even be the last time today. And as far as life-threatening injuries went, this rated barely a flesh wound. Granted, it didn't exactly make him prettier, but he could grit his teeth and bear it, at least until Ziegler could take a look at him. But even Ziegler couldn't cure a case of hole-in-the-head, which they were bound to come down with if they didn't start moving.

 _Now_.

"Keen observations," he noted, motioning to her. "Let's get going before they break out the shovels and dig their way through the collapse." Tracer opened her mouth as if to say something, but he didn't give her a chance to speak, lurching forward into the darkness. It had been a long day—and it wasn't even quite midday yet—and he fished a cheap stogie out of a case in his back pocket. He lit it with a battered Zippo, inhaling deeply, the ember at the end of the cigar flaring into a hot coal that lit their way. He drew on it as he went, and found that his prosthesis—which had up until now been shaking like an old prizefighter—began to steady itself.

"Was this one of your smuggler's tunnels?" Tracer asked over his shoulder, the passageway still too narrow for the pair to walk side-by-side.

"Yes," McCree answered succinctly, a gray nimbus of smoke clinging to his body like a shroud. "We should be coming up on a large chamber pretty soon. Natural spring in the center. Roof also opens up to the sky, and the rainwater collects there." His memories played like an old, sepia-tinted western. He could see the group of them now, Walton, Jesse, and the others, all kneeling at the edge of the crystal-clear waters, filling their canteens as they made their trek through the sunbaked canyons of Deadlock Gorge. He remembered the first time Walton had shown him the cave, the pair of them delivering over three dozen small-arms to a sometimes coyote, sometimes gunrunner contact of his, guns which would undoubtedly find their way into the hands of freedom fighters south of the border, guns which would end a corrupt regime and bring freedom to thousands. Or at least, McCree had told himself that back then. It was much more likely the guns he'd provided had gone straight into the hands of drug czars and gangsters, who knows how many women and children butchered because of him. Life was funny like that. All he remembered thinking at the time was what a sacred place that cave seemed, with its beautiful springwater, its natural skylight revealing a sky so blue and still it seemed almost painted on. But that had been another life, a long time ago.

It seemed not much had changed in McCree's absence. The cave was exactly how he had pictured it, exactly how he had left it. The pair rounded a bend in the tunnel, and emerged into the large, open chamber, sunlight streaking in from above, illuminating ridges of stalagmites and other natural formations, walls bezeled with purple quartz crystals and glass bulbs of selenite glinting in the sun. At the center of it all was a gaping limestone cenote, wide as a municipal swimming pool, but shallow enough to only come up to the whiskers of his chin.

"Wow," Tracer whistled, the echo carrying across the chamber, the acoustics of the place like an amphitheatre. "This is ... _lovely_ ," she said finally, inspecting the crystalline walls.

"Yeah," he agreed, not dwelling on it. Something about the place made him itch, all the memories there, not all of them bad.

"What's this?" Tracer asked, kneeling down next to the face of a bare wall. She huffed and puffed and blew a cloud of dust away off the smooth rock, revealing what looked like burn marks on the rock face. Closer inspection revealed they were figures—names. One of them his own.

"Just adolescent graffiti," he said, admiring his chickenscratch name on the wall, scrunched between Walton's and Dirk's. God, they really had been kids back then, dumber than all hell and with more scrap in them than they had any right to. It was some wonder Reyes had brought him into the fold all those years ago, as much of a punk he was back then. If the roles were reversed, he probably would have just shot him and saved himself the trouble. Whatever Reyes saw in him back then—maybe something of himself—wasn't worth a lick anymore. Reyes—the real Reyes—was dead, and the grand mysteries of the inner workings of his mind would forever elude him. McCree read the names of all of his former brothers inscribed upon the wall, and found himself growing pensive. Most of them were dead. And if memory served, he'd put some of them in the ground, himself. The Deadlock Gang had been his family not so long ago, and they'd done a hell of a lot better job raising him than his drunkard, wifebeating father ever had. And he'd ratted them all out to save his skin. He could still see the look in Walton's eyes if he closed his own, that startled, agape look of betrayal as McCree snuck up behind him and jammed the barrel of his revolver into the temple of his skull.

 _BANG_!

McCree blinked. "MOVE!" he shouted, shoving Tracer backwards behind a small ridge. The first bullet struck the rock behind him, whizzing past him like a fat hornet. He dove behind a large stalagmite as a wave of bullets tore through the still air, the entire chamber echoing, vibrating, thrumming like the inside of a drying machine. He hadn't gotten much of a look at the gunmen posted above the skylight, at least four of them, armed with heavy ordnance. He recognized the distinct, throaty chugging of an HSI .50 cal that one of them had lugged over and assembled, their squad's gunner laying down heavy suppressive fire. Even now, the large column of stone he hid behind began to flake and splinter into pieces as the bullets chipped away the rock and kicked up acrid plumes of dust. Across the chamber was Tracer, none the worse for wear. She made a gesture with her hand, and before McCree could protest, she poked her head out from above the ridge, and risked a wild, aimless shot. The retaliation came instantly.

A fresh wave of bullets spilled out anew, this time, concentrated directly on Tracer's position. McCree wouldn't let the opportunity pass. Before he could second guess himself, the old gunslinger found himself materializing from behind the stone pillar, his Peacemaker trained to the sky. The sun was almost at its zenith now, positioned perfectly behind their attackers. He had to squint to make out their dark figures against the harsh daylight. Six of them. A loving home for every bullet chambered in his revolver. It was as if the universe itself had conspired in his favor. Though their visages were hidden behind tactical faceplates of steel and ceramic, he could imagine their looks of terror as they realized their mistake. He didn't hesitate.

What sounded like a single gunshot filled the chamber, followed by silence.

And then the bodies began to fall.

They all hit the water within moments of each other, the still, crystalline waters of the cenote turning violent, frothy and white. And then, _red_ , McCree observed, kneeling now at the edge of the pool, searching for his reflection there, and finding none.

It was there Tracer found him.

"That was some good shootin'," she said half-heartedly, trying to help, but realizing she was only making things worse, like offering a glass of water to a drowning man.

"Yeah," McCree said, back on his feet now. "It's what Reyes saw in me all those years ago."

"What are you talking about, Jesse?" she asked, making a polite attempt to not look at the bodies sinking deeper into the water, and not doing a very good job of it.

" _Killing_ ," he answered. "The only thing I was ever any good at."

The look in her eyes said it all.

...

* * *

...

McCree managed to budge the false wall after five minutes of solid effort. The mechanism had evidently rusted shut, and the sheer, oppressive loudness of the scraping of metal was loud enough to gain the attention of any passerby within at least a country mile. When they emerged into the grease-stained basement of _Zed's Garage_ , they were thankfully alone. But for just how long that would be exactly, McCree couldn't say.

"Nice place," Tracer mused, running her finger along a sunken, rotting workshelf, finding it positively buried in dust. Only a sliver of light peaked in from a cracked half-window at ground level at the opposite end of the room, motes of dust flickering in the sunbeams. "Think we can find you a first aid kit here?"

"Doubt it. This place was never up to code." McCree had long since given up the hope of finding clean gauze for his unsightly head wound, and had resorted to binding a torn strip of his poncho awkwardly around his head. It had thankfully stemmed the bleeding, though did nothing to improve his wardrobe, as Tracer noted.

"This some kind of workshop?" Tracer asked, playing absentmindedly with an Allen wrench she'd found entombed under a pile of disintegrating car mags. Various odds and ends were scattered about the room, which had evidently been trashed and abandoned since McCree's last visit, some years ago. He spied a workbench in the corner, well-worn from years of use, a mountain of assorted tools and junk covering it. An old, disembodied 500cc engine stood sentinel in the center of the room, now home to what looked to be like some impressive and enterprising specimen of rodent. The concrete floor was stained with oil, and littered with half-soaked newspapers and empty cans of various fluids. The basement's once-white refrigerator had long since given up the ghost, McCree counting four bullet holes in the front door, and one large dent exactly the shape of his fist.

"Bike shop," he said.

"I almost forgot you used to be a biker," she said, studying the gutted engine before her. He'd never been much with a horse, but he'd always felt at home on two-wheels, doing a hundred down the highway.

"When I wasn't running guns, I was usually on my bike. Spent many a day at this shop, working on her." A man never forgot his first bike. As he recalled, one of his stipulations to Reyes had been that he got to keep it with him, transported at Overwatch's expense. Surprisingly, Reyes had agreed, if for no other reason than to anger his handler, Morrison. In hindsight, that was probably the first red flag. He remembered the long nights he'd spent tinkering on his bike in their Swiss headquarters, alongside his old comrade, Torbjörn, whose fondness for his machine outmatched McCree's own to an extent that he had found to be, _frankly_ , unsettling. It was a shame then that Reyes had blown the whole thing all to hell, along with everything that had been Overwatch. He chalked it up as just another one of many things he'd lost that day.

"What happened to the owner?" Tracer wondered aloud, glancing at the bullet holes in the fridge.

" _Dead_ ," McCree answered, making his first tentative step up the rotten, wooden staircase. It seemed to hold, and he put one foot after the other.

"You need to talk about this stuff, McCree," she said, looking up at him from the foot of the stairs. "This place has some kind of hold on you. I've noticed it since we first got here."

"I _am_ talking," he said. "And now I'm _walking_. You're welcome to follow me if you like." She muttered something rude under her breath, which was unlike her, and began to follow him upstairs.

"Talk to me. Where are we heading?" _You know good and damn well where we're heading_ , McCree wanted to say. _Stop dancing around it._

"The motel," he said, not looking back to see if it had registered.

"I get it, McCree," she answered. "You have unfinished business here. Everyone has their own ghosts." _Not ghosts like these, hungry and vengeful._

"I know the layout," he started, interrupting her. "It's defensible. Gives us a good view of the town proper. Enough room for Winston to land, and get us our exfil," he said, his logic even sounding good to him. She called him out immediately, him expecting no less from the woman.

"That's bollocks, and you know it," she snapped at him.

" _Language_ ," he protested.

"You know bloody well those aren't your real reasons for wanting to return to that ... " she stopped suddenly, McCree wondering if her next word had been meant to be _slaughterhouse_. " _Place_."

"Anyone ever tell you you talk too much?" he said, getting angry now, taking it out on the door, which gave way, hinges and all. The sunlight exploded into his face, and his hand instinctively went for his Peacemaker. He stepped out onto the main floor of the garage, skirting past the skeletal, rusted remains of motorcycles that littered the floor, all the windows and doors firmly shut, the dry, still heat of the building now practically unbearable.

"Jesse, you stop this instant and talk to me!" she cried from behind him. "Whatever happened in your past doesn't matter anymore. _Please_ , just listen to me." He laughed bitterly at her, making a show of it, and a real ass out of himself, he was objective enough to realize.

"That 'past is the past' sentiment you're shilling ain't worth a damn, Tracer," he spat. "Don't lecture me about dealing with my past, when you can change yours on a whim. Us normal folk? We don't have the luxury of second chances."

Her reaction was surprising, if not unexpected.

She shoved him. _Hard_. His foot managed to find and overturned chair, and McCree found himself staring at the ceiling, contemplating the series of events that had led him to this exact moment in time. For a minute, the only thing that existed was the painful throbbing where his ear used to be, the wound now bleeding with renewed vigor. Tracer was the first to break the silence.

"Are you going to apologize?" she asked. Demanded, more like. _Only a woman could knock a man to the ground and it be his fault_. He didn't bother looking at her. He could see her in his mind's eye anyway, her back turned to him in disgust, arms crossed and foot tapping in impatience.

"No," he said firmly, mustering up all the dignity of a man lying flat on his ass.

"Well, neither am I,' she huffed.

"Wouldn't expect you to," he admitted. He closed his eyes, and lowered the brim of his hat until most of the sun vanished. He didn't see any other way out of this. "You said you wanted to talk."

"Yes, that does sound like something I would say," Tracer snarked at him.

"So, _ask away_." There was a moment of tense silence. She clearly knew most of the sordid details already, or at least the high notes, and was trying to work up the courage to ask him, now that he'd finally given her the chance.

"The Deadlock Gang," she said. "The hotel. You ..." she trailed off, searching for the right words. McCree suspected there were none, no magic fibonacci sequence of English to make everything okay. She sighed. "What happened?" _That certainly narrows it down,_ he thought, annoyed. Still, by his reckoning, he owed her that much and more, and if he had really wanted to leave his past alone, he never would have returned in the first place. He supposed he wanted closure, he allowed himself. He groaned, and picked himself up off the ground. Tracer offered him her hand, and he accepted it without complaint.

"I fell in with a gang," he explained. "We ran guns south of the border. I was pretty good at what I did, me and another boy named Walton Greaves." They had been about the same age, both of them from similar backgrounds, both trying to escape their fathers, and in ways, becoming them. They were fast friends, fighting, drinking, and bleeding together, sometimes all during the course of a single night. "Raised a lot of hell back then. Fast forward a few years, and we're all but running this operation, just two dumb kids barely old enough to vote." It had been hard making something of themselves, days and nights smuggling guns across the harsh, unforgiving desert, dodging cops and dodging bullets. The worst were the handoffs, alleys and warehouses full of shifty-eyed gunthugs, everyone on edge, waiting for the other side to do something stupid and start a shootout. More often than not, things would go smooth enough, but there were always the times where they didn't, and McCree had to earn his pay, one bullet at a time.

"You were quite infamous back then, I've heard," she said, testing the waters between them, finding them murky and treacherous.

"I had my face in a lot of papers back then, if that's what you mean." It had been a game to him, all those years ago, getting his mug plastered over as many posters as possible— _WANTED: JESSE MCCREE_. He still remembered that feeling of pride he received whenever he first read the words _dead or alive_. "We made a name for ourselves after a while," he said. "I like to think we stood for something back then," he added as an afterthought, almost wistful. "Or at least, we _did,_ " he said, cigar materializing in his canines. His eyes grew distant, and faraway, as if looking into a dream. "... up until the killing started."

* * *

Thank you all so much for reading! I look forward to continuing not only this story, but if things go well, another one further down the line that would be much broader in scope. Thanks again!

EDIT: Also, a big, sloppy thank you to the anonymous reviewer who pointed out to me that, yes, Sweden and Switzerland are two different countries.


	4. Snakes

Hello, everyone! Sorry about the delay. My professional and personal lives have been very hectic lately, but blah, blah, blah, excuses, I'm a bad person. Hope you enjoy.

* * *

The streets were deserted, and had remained so for years. They stuck to the alleys and byways of the ghost town, avoiding the main streets as they went, for fear of prying eyes. Nature had finally started to reclaim this place, dust and dirt everywhere, pouring in through broken windows and open storefronts. It was as if the Earth itself was trying to swallow the town whole, and not doing a very good job of it. A man could choke to death on a place like this—he was living proof of that, but for how much longer, he couldn't say. He cradled a fire extinguisher tucked into the crook of his damaged arm, one he'd salvaged from the basement of Zed's Garage. He'd tested it on the ground and found it to be in working order. _I love it when a plan comes together_ , he thought, turning over the cigar dangling precariously from his lips. In his other hand, a _crackle_ of static rumbled from the communicator.

"Winston, this is McCree," he said, deciding to forego the callsigns and radio codes. There was no point, anyway. If any disreputable persons were listening—which was a foregone conclusion at this point—they already knew who they were and what they were capable of, their strengths and stratagems. Bastion had seen to that. That was the genius of friends—they always made the deadliest enemies in the end. And the widow woman _was_ deadly, make no mistake, lest it be your last. Amélie had died the day she murdered her husband. As far as McCree was concerned, all that was left of her was an ambling, blue-skinned corpse, a ghost starved for blood, listening in hungrily on their private radio line, a poltergeist haunting them with a large caliber rifle. "If you can hear us, we need _immediate_ exfil." This next part was the hat trick. He looked at Tracer for confirmation. She nodded at him. He half-wished she wouldn't have, him thinking the woman was much too wise for his asinine plans. "We're holed up at the High Side bar in the center of town. _Hurry_."

It was a naughty trick, but it was the only plan they had.

The Cave Inn Motel would never have been mistaken for the Ritz in McCree's day, but the years had not been kind in his absence. A relic even back then, it was a small wonder the place was still standing. Six stories of dry, rotting wood and broken windows, an ugly giant looming over the town proper. Dust had infiltrated the establishment to the point where it was difficult to discern where the dust ended and the building began, as if it were seeping in through the walls themselves, drifts of it shin-deep, accumulating under open windows and carried about by the complex system of wind tunnels and drafts that circulated throughout the building. The wind played strange tricks in the hallway, as though it were a lost guest, kicking up dust and detritus in its wake. The floorboards groaned angrily in protest at the pair's every step, and half the second floor bannister exploded out from him under his weight, nearly sending him express down to the lobby. The young woman's hand bit hard into the rough flesh of his forearm, steadying him. He nodded a wordless thanks.

"This place has seen better days." Tracer said, her voice straining as she shifted the weight of her own fire extinguisher to her other arm, leaning in now to blow a cloud of dust off a cracked picture frame dotting the wall. It took her a second to realize the crack emanated from a bullet hole in the center of the frame, ruining some poor artist's perfectly serviceable landscape painting.

"Reckon it's seen some worse days, too," McCree said at the sight of the bullet hole, knowing that there were exactly ninety-three such other holes catalogued and scattered around the building. The evidence collection crew had done a pretty bang-up job bagging and tagging all the evidence, as the bullet that had ended the life of Jeb Murphy was now likely collecting dust in some evidence locker in a basement somewhere, abandoned the day Blackwatch rode into town. An an ugly, brown smear on the wall was all that was left of the outlaw now, maybe some bits of viscera and hair follicles if one cared to get one's hands dirty. The slaughter had been so violent, so wanton, so messy, and above all, _public_ , that the motel had gone under practically overnight. It seemed it rubbed most guests the wrong way, sleeping in rooms where men had their brains ventilated. With no money coming in, they hadn't bothered to hire the crime scene cleanup crew, men in hazmat suits and rubber galoshes, experts in the removal of various bodily fluids and neutralization of odors. The net effect was that McCree found himself staring wistfully into the rust-brown splotch on the wall that had managed to seep in through the wallpaper. Arterial spray, he knew, only dessicated skin cells and blood fragments left of Jeb Murphy, the kid fulfilling his promise all those years ago to make his mark on the world. Tracer looked for all the world like she wanted to say something, but all she said was "Oh."

They rounded the service elevator as they hiked upwards, the rusted husk of the iron latticework looking for all intents and purposes some kind of death trap that would take them all the way back down to the lobby, and most like in McCree's case, Hell. Most of the rooms he passed he recognized from the crime scene photos he had seen some time after the killing had taken place. Rotten tangles of police tape on the ground, the odd chalk outline. Graffiti every now and then, beer cans, teenagers chasing cheap thrills. He supposed he wasn't one to judge, if not execute. After all, he'd spent his teenage years looking down the nose of a revolver. _There_ , in the hallway, votive candles, a shrine to the deceased, a man's picture, faded and weatherworn, but still legible. A cop he'd been, at least until Micky Irish dug the business end of a .357 into the back of his skull and painted the hallway with him. He'd known the victim's name at one point. He'd memorized them all at some point, their stories gleaned from the papers, from obituaries, lives and legacies condensed into half-paragraphs continued on page six. All he saw now was a phantom, faceless and nameless. If he saw the man on the street tomorrow, he doubted he would even notice.

It was on the sixth floor that Tracer finally spoke.

"McCree," she blurted. "Say something!" He blinked, awoken as if from a trance.

"Sorry," he said, rubbing the sand out of his eyes. It felt like this day would continue in perpetuity. It was only noon now, _high noon_ , an omen by his reckoning. Whether it was a good one or a bad one, it remained to be seen. He was tired, tired in his bones. He became aware of the slow, glacier migration of his hand towards his Peacemaker, more warm and reassuring than the touch of any lover he'd ever known. He saw the look in her eyes as she noticed him. He eased his hand away, not without some difficulty, like extracting a tooth. "Nerves," he admitted, something in the wrinkle of her eyebrows suggesting matronly concern.

"I know this must be difficult for you," she said, in that way of hers that rubbed him the wrong way, like good advice coming from your worst enemy.

"If I'd have known we were going to take a stroll down memory lane, I would've grabbed my umbrella," he said, expecting nothing short of a torrential downpour. She'd evidently become fed up with what he generously referred to as his "witticisms."

" ' _Oh, look at me_ ,' " Tracer began, deepening her voice and assuming a lurching, hunched over posture, suggesting something subhuman, some missing link in Darwin's chain of evolution. " ' _I'm Jesse McCree and I'm a big strong man and I never talk about my feelings even though_ T _racer's such a good listener and only cares about my well-being but I don't care because I wear a cowboy hat and smokes cigars because I'm so cool and_ — ' " She went on for some time, McCree tuning her out about halfway through her rant. By the seventh floor, she had yapped herself out of breath, which was impressive, given her extensive background in track and field.

"You done?" he asked, impressed. Behind her orange goggles, the annoyance was written in her eyes.

"I don't know," she snapped rhetorically. "What do you think?"

"I think your impression of me was as unflattering as it was long-winded. I wouldn't take your act on the road just yet if I was you."

"Everyone's a critic," she frowned. "Fine. I won't say anything. Silent treatment it is."

"Fine by me," he said.

"Good," she retorted.

"That's not silent treatment."

"Shut up," she replied.

"As you please," he acquiesced, and the two continued in silence. They headed for the eastern wing of the floor, room 714, McCree knowing it would give the best view of the High Side bar. The door was locked, but gave when he drove his shoulder into it, probably harder than he should have, but given the situation, the door was probably the most appropriate outlet for his anger. The room was preserved in a layer of dust in the fashion of a Pompeii victim, everything seeming more or less as it was before, save for the naked bedspring frame in the center of the room. The mattress was gone, and if the large, rusted splotch of brown underneath the bedframe was any indication, he could make a guess why. If memory served, the man had been left bolted to his mattress with a Bowie knife the size of his forearm. He imagined that would've been a pleasant sight for housekeeping. They set down their extinguishers gently, and he found the only chair in the room, a rickety, wooden thing that didn't look much more comfortable than the floor itself, and drug it over to the window. He offered it to Tracer, who made a show of turning her nose away in haughty disgust, evidently disapproving of his chivalrous gesture. He elected to plant his happy ass down and watch the show unfold. With any luck, this plan of theirs would work. But sitting here amongst all the death, all the ghosts that haunted the hallways, McCree didn't expect Lady Luck to so much as his return his phone calls.

The dried blood on the floor hadn't gone unnoticed by Tracer, who every now and then glanced back over her shoulder, clearly uncomfortable. "What happened in here?" she asked, in a tone that suggested she really didn't want to know.

"One of my buddies happened. A kid named Bartow Casket. Good kid, couldn't play poker to save his life. Anyway, he came in one night and stabbed a man to death. Cop. Survived by his wife and kids. Well, _kids_ , but that's another, somewhat less fun story." He was hoping she would curse at him. Call him something. He was hungry for it.

"You're not that person anymore, McCree," she said. He groaned, leaning back in his chair, letting the brim of his hat obscure his face. "You were never that person."

"You know nothing about me."

"I know you didn't kill these people." Whether she'd done her homework, or was just saying it because she cared about him enough to protect him from his own mistakes, it didn't much matter at all.

"I may not have plunged the knife," he admitted, "but I'm more to blame than the ones that did."

"Have it your way," she said finally, absentmindedly doodling on the cracked, dirt-covered windowpane. He got up out of the chair, uneasy, deciding to switch gears, drive the hell away from the topic as fast as he could.

"If we're gonna beat Widowmaker at her own game, we're gonna have to do something about her thermal optics."

"And that's why you've made me lug this fire extinguisher up six flights of stairs?" she protested, her grin betraying her anger. He managed a chuckle.

"Hey," he grumbled, "I carried one all the way up here too, and not once did you hear me whining about it."

"You weigh nearly twice what I do!"

"I'm a wounded man. I've had half my face blown off, and I haven't even had lunch yet." Tracer mumbled something offensive and uniquely British before setting the canister down in annoyance, just hard enough in the proximity of his toes to gain his rapt attention.

"Where did you even get the idea for this anyway?" she asked him.

"Reyes," he said, and to her credit, she didn't flinch. "Thankfully, one of his many survival lessons included how to hide from IR imaging." The man had taught him many life lessons over the course of McCree's rather eventful Blackwatch career, some of them more immediately useful, like how to make a suppressor out of an oil filter, and others not so much, like the proper technique for hemming a pair of suit pants.

Reyes had always been a man of complexity, a hidden depth that no one had ever seen, or even cared to. But he was a different man now, if you could even call him that. And from what he'd seen firsthand, it seemed like the only thing hidden in the depths of his former friend and mentor's soul now were punji sticks.

"He was something else, alright" Tracer agreed, more for his benefit. She hadn't known him like he did. She hadn't seen the man before his fall, before he became the thing in the mask. He supposed he couldn't blame her. "I trust it goes without saying, that you earned top marks on this lesson?"

"Not exactly," McCree admitted. "He was a good teacher, but I was a bad student. No, this trick is outta my playbook. Saw it in a movie, once."

"In a … _movie?!"_ she blurted, eyes wide. "Are you even sure this will work?" He elected to ignore her last remark, no matter how well-founded it was.

"You're gonna want to cover up any exposed skin," he said. "This stuff _burns._ I'm talking instant frostbite."

"You learn that from a movie, too?"

"Personal experience. Get a couple of dumb kids together with too much time on their hands and you can learn a whole lotta things."

"So, what's the plan, then?"

"You're gonna stay here, watch the bar. The remainder of her squad should converge on the position, thinking we're holed up there. When they get close enough, you blow it. It'll be messy, but if we time it right, we may be able to take out everyone in the explosion with as few casualties as possible, maybe take some of their soldiers in for questioning. But that's not priority." Some part of him wanted nothing more than to draw the soldiers inside, into the killzone, turn them into a fine pink mist. Really, it was the only way to assure their safety, by neutralizing all threats. It was smart. It was what Reyes would have done. But it was not what Tracer would have done. And he'd be damned before he let her follow him down the path he walked alone. "Meanwhile, with any luck, our girl's gonna post up on the roof of this hotel to line up a shot on the bar. Using the fire extinguisher to mask my heat signature, as well as my cat-like reflexes, I'll sneak up on her and give her a piece of my mind. With her and her boys down for the count, it's just a matter of waiting for our pal Winston to land a bird on the roof."

"What about _him_?" she asked, clearly tracking his explanation, and noticing the gaping hole in it exactly the size of one Bastion unit.

"What about him?" he said, completely unfazed. "It's likely he'll set up outside the perimeter while Talon moves in, thinking they're gonna catch us unawares. If anything goes wrong, he'll probably start laying down fire, mowing down everybody in the joint." He'd seen firsthand what that gatling gun of his could do. There wouldn't even be enough left of those boys to bury if he started shooting.

"And what if he marches in first? To look for us?" He didn't think it likely, but there was a chance the bot would be sent in first to clear the way for the soldiers. But knowing how little the Widowmaker valued life, he'd say the odds weren't great. But even if it came to pass, it changed nothing.

"Then you wait until the soldiers show up, and you blow it," he said, not trying to make his voice hard, but hearing the harsh sound of it, as if from far away

"Surely you're not suggesting … ?" He could tell already this was going to be a problem. At the end of the day, she was a better person than him, he knew. But if they were going to even see the end of the day, some tough calls were going to have to be made. And as far as he was concerned the life—if you could even call it that—of one Bastion unit did not a moral dilemma make.

"I'm suggesting we _live_ , Tracer."

"But he's one of _us_ ," she insisted.

"He's not anything, Tracer. He's an oddity. A broken, discarded tool. And don't get on your high horse about omnic rights. He's not a real omnic. Bastion's a toaster compared to your buddy Zenyatta. A junkyard dog compared to a man. And a rabid one, at that. No matter how hard you want to believe, he'll never be anything but."

"There's something _there_ ," Tracer rasped at him, her fists clenched into angry little orbs. "I've seen it!"

"No, Lena," he said, eyes narrowing into reptilian slits. "There's really not."

"You sound just like _him_ ," she said. He knew who she was referring to. McCree was the only one who ever said his name anymore; they would never dare to speak it aloud, as if it belonged to some forgotten demon, ancient and terrible, and invoking his name would summon him and bring about the end times. "A murderer, like _him_."

"I'm trying to keep us alive, Lena. Maybe if your chronal accelerator wasn't on the fritz we could try something. That's gotta be some kind of wonderful, huh? Be able to fix every mistake you ever made? I hate to break it to you, _love_ , but you're back in the real world now—at least temporarily. And here, in the real world, bullets don't move backwards, no matter how much you politely ask them to."

"You have no idea what it's like to be me," she hissed at him. "You have no idea what kind of burden my abilities are." He almost snorted.

"You're a regular Atlas, honey," he spat, pleased with himself. "Carrying the weight of the world."

"You're not the only one with demons," she said, more to herself, shocked. But he didn't care. He was going for blood now.

"Oh, well, excuse me, ma'am, I didn't realize you were battling demons of your own. A man can get confused on account of how you're always smiling and laughing that ditzy laugh of yours." He was expecting anger. Anger he could deal with. Anger he was good at. Anger was all he knew. Instead, she only looked at him too stunned for words. In all his years on Earth, he'd made a lot of women cry. His mother had been the first. But not Tracer. Not today. She was too strong for that. But he saw something, a twitch of something, a rawness in her eyes that he'd never seen before, hollow yet somehow filled with hurt. Disappointment. Shame. And it scared the hell out of him.

" … _Idiot_!" she managed to scream through her gritted teeth. "Did you ever stop to think that maybe it's all an act?! That there might be some kind of reason I act like a clown?!" He opened his mouth to say something, but the words hadn't caught up to his lips, and she said "no, you haven't. Because it's all about you! Can you even _imagine_ what it's like to have my abilities?! When every single thing is going wrong in the world, and you're the only one that can do something about it? Watching your loved ones die around you, and hoping against hope that the powers you can't even control will decide to work when you need them most? That if I was only better and stronger, I could save everyone? That maybe the reason I act so bloody chipper is because it's the only way I can deal with watching my friends die over and over and over again?! Do you know what it's like to see a sniper rifle punch a hole through one of your last, dearest friends and watch him bleed out on the side of the road?! Could you even—" she stopped so suddenly, it had practically given her whiplash. McCree blinked. _Does she mean_ … _?_

"Today?" he asked, not particularly sure he wanted to know the answer. "By the side of the road?" He made the mistake of looking into her eyes, and for a moment he thought he saw the reflection of a dead man. She shied away from under his gaze, and turned her back to him. He supposed he'd always thought about it, an ideation always at the back of his mind, but he'd never asked, and she'd never told. He came dangerously close to opening his mouth and asking _Just how many times have I died today, Ms. Oxton?_ but ultimately decided against it. That knowledge wouldn't do him any good. He began to think he saw now just the barest glimpse of the burden that the young woman carried. He wished someone would crack him in the face, split his nose open, anything to make up for what he'd just said. "Lena, I …" he began, hand reaching out as if to take the girl by the shoulder. As she turned back to him, it recoiled back as if by its own volition, like a snake slithering back into its hole. "I had no idea."

"Save it," she said, and that was it. He'd been so caught up in himself here, in this place of death, this place of ghosts, he'd never once considered the fact that the young woman had demons of her own, enough to fill nine layers of her own personal hell. "Let's just focus on the mission at hand."

He wasn't good at these kinds of things. He supposed he never would be.

"Do you want to …" he sighed. He'd been shot at least half a hundred times over the span of his life, but none of those times compared to this. " … want to talk about it?" he asked, drawing upon his vast reservoir of memory, attempting to recreate what he'd seen in others the exact sequence of muscle movements whose end result was the smile. He suspected it didn't come out quite right, as she looked at him and let out a broken, exasperated laugh. But what followed was a smile of her own, however bittersweet as it was.

"It seems the tables have turned, love," she said, looking at him that way she looked at everyone, that way of hers that had a way of looking through you. "No, Jesse. I really don't." It was then that he knew what he had to do.

"I know I've been nothing but a real jackass today," he admitted.

"True," she agreed. "And there's still plenty of day yet let." He decided he would push on.

"But if you still care to hear my story, I guess I owe you that much. That much and more." Her head cocked to the side, as if she was wondering if this was some sort of elaborate trick.

"Jesse, you don't have to—"

"I know I don't have to," he retorted. "You know goddamned well nobody's ever made me do something I didn't want to do." She was smiling now, something genuine that came from the depths of a place inside that he long suspected he didn't have anymore. She didn't say anything else. She didn't have to. He braced himself against the window overlooking the scene below, a scene that would likely become blood and fire, just like every other scene in the tragedy that was Jesse McCree. He looked out there, to the red mountains off in the distance, and let the memories come to him, like trail-weary travelers hanging up their coats in the foyer of his mind. The sun was high in the sky, angry in its judgment, and he tipped the brim of his hat just so, enough to take the edge off.

"I killed my first man at twelve years old," he began.

* * *

Hope you enjoyed it. I'm already thinking way ahead and outlining a new story much broader in scope, one that will incorporate not only Sombra, but many other major characters. But I fear I'm overpromising and underdelivering.

Until next time.


	5. Like Sands Through the Hourglass

Hello, everyone! This story is winding down now, and hopefully I can finish it off in, say, two more chapters. I'm eager to start a new Overwatch story much, much, much bigger in scope, but I found out recently I will be out of country for several months in the near future, so we'll see.

* * *

 _Self-defense_ , they'd called it in after-the-fact, and he'd been all too eager to agree with them. And sure, he allowed himself, maybe that had contributed to him pulling the trigger. It had taken him years to come to terms with it, but the deciding factor, that thumb that had tipped the scales had been something inside him, something dark, and wrathful. He _was_ his father's son after all, something in the man's eyes almost like pride, understanding, as he stared down the black hole of his gun. In hindsight, he realized that act had described a trajectory for the rest of his life, the life of a betrayer, the kinslayer. He'd killed all the family he'd ever known, everything he'd touched ash and wreck. He looked out through the window as if for an answer, and found none, just an old bar on a street of dirt. He spoke.

"I often wondered how it came to this point. It seems so obvious now." It was a foregone conclusion. Walton, the gang, the killing—everything. Their business had always been violent, and to think he could've somehow emerged with his soul intact was foolish, naive in the way of some dumb kind who thinks he's got the world figured out. He'd told himself back then that he'd avoided needless bloodshed, but that had been a bold-faced lie. He'd merely shifted the burden to Walton Greaves, his partner in crime, and the boy had relished in it. "You said it earlier," he recalled. "We were pretty infamous back then. Me and Walton made more money running guns than we knew what to do with. Ended up drawing the attention of a cartel across the border. _Los Muertos_. These were the kind of guys that made you an offer you couldn't refuse. Of course, being the two dumb, bullheaded kids we were, we didn't much take to someone telling us what to do. "

"What happened?" asked Tracer, fascinated.

"As it turned out, these were also the kind of guys that didn't take 'no' for an answer. The kind of guys would cut a man's head off with a chainsaw, send you a souvenir." They'd never recovered Billy's body. Not enough to bury, anyway. Not even the hounds could pick up the scent. It was as if he had fallen off the face of the Earth.

"Good lord," she said. "What did you do, Jesse?" If he could live to be a hundred, he'd never be able to understand why people asked questions they already knew the answers to.

" _War_ ," he said, "Or at least that's what Walton called it." _A hundred_ _heads for every one of ours_ , he remembered, the fire in his eyes like nothing he'd ever seen before, or since. _And a hundred bodies to match_ , he knew, more unmarked, lonesome graves in this cursed desert than in the town cemetery proper. "Later, we got a hot tip the cartel was sending their best hit squad north, our front door. Word had come down they were holed up in some hotel, laying low until they got the order to move on us. Walton decided then and there we'd hit them first, and hit them _hard_."

"Get them before they got you," she seemed to agree absentmindedly, more with the logic of it than the method. "Makes sense."

"And I said nothing until it was too late. Not a goddamned care in the world about anyone being caught in the crossfire."

"Jesse—"

"He picks seven of his best and ten greenhorns. My head's not in the game, and I end up spending the evening slumped over a bartop." Even now, the memory was fuzzy, Slim cracking him over the head with a fungo bat, Chessani making off with his gun. _If you ain't with us Jesse, you're against us_ , Walton had said. It had been hard to argue with that aphorism while he was lying face down in a pool of his own teeth. He'd thought he could sit Switzerland and drink until the whole sordid affair was over, keep his hands clean. But he had been wrong, and his hands were just as red. _Never again_ , he'd promised himself in the fresh light of morning, sirens piercing the air.

"They crept in after midnight," he said. "Armed and out for blood. They synchronized their watches, and using another secret tunnel like the ones we used earlier, entered the hotel from the basement. They positioned themselves outside the alleged rooms, and at precisely 0315, kicked down the doors." He grew silent for a few moments before fishing a cigar from his pouch.

"I know what happens next," Tracer admitted, quietly. "You don't have to continue," she said, as if she thought she could somehow protect him from himself. He sighed.

"Funny thing is," he grumbled from the corner of his mouth, the familiar _clink_ of his lighter echoing throughout the empty room, the cigar tasting warm and earthy, a grey haze of smoke escaping his lips, "they kick down the doors, and what do you think they find?" She opened her mouth to say something, but whatever it was would never have been good enough. " _Federales_. Cops, a good dozen of them. Remember that hot tip we got got a while back? Turned out it had come from the Mexicans. Cartel must've had a man on the inside. Turned out the Mexicans had been feeding the cops enough information to make them dangerous. They'd assembled a task force against us and were posted up in the hotel, conducting surveillance work, trying to build a case on us." He took a long draw, savoring the taste as though it were his last meal on death row. "Walton and his boys roll up, thinking they've got the drop on a bunch of Los Muertos assassins, and proceed to kick down every door. What follows is about what you would expect. In a single chess move, the Mexicans manage to thin out our numbers, put some cops in the ground for good measure, and ensure that anyone with a badge is going to come and collect on us." He liked to think that not even the Mexicans had any clue just how perfectly their little stunt had gone off, drawing the ire of Blackwatch. "The Deadlock Gang—the real one, at least—died that day. Nature abhors a vacuum, and Los Muertos swooped in on our territory like a buzzard to a corpse wagon." By the time Tracer spoke, his cigar was nearly ash in his mouth. He glared down at the street below him, wishing for anything to pull him away from this.

"What did you do in the aftermath? I can't imagine you and this Walton fellow remained on good terms. You must've had quite the falling out." He almost laughed.

"That's one way to put it," he said. He'd come up on his friend from behind, a look of surprise on his face as he'd jabbed the business end of his .38 into Walton's temple. It would have been almost deafeningly quiet, save for the dull roar of his engine, as he'd put the young man's shrinking body in his rearview mirror, letting the desert reclaim the evil it had sowed. "I ended up raiding a weapons cache just about no one else knew of. Stole some serious hardware, and hastily organized a deal. Trying to buy my way to a clean getaway and a clear conscience, I suppose. But in my haste I had gotten sloppy. And that's when I met Gabriel Reyes."

"Now that story I've heard in detail," she said, trying artfully to dodge the subject. "How he brought you in." _That's one way of putting it._

The whole thing had been a sting operation from the start. He knew he hadn't liked the man the moment he'd seen him, knew he'd be trouble. McCree had chosen the location at the last minute, an old storage and processing facility on the outskirts of town, thinking if it were a trap, he wouldn't give them time enough to set it. He'd worn his revolver openly on his hip, warning enough not to trifle with him. The man had come alone, visibly unarmed, his dark hoodie not betraying the outline of a pistol or sawn-off. McCree had known then something was off, the man's gaze icy and raw in a way that made him immediately conscious of his every movement, like a gazelle observed from afar by a lion. By the look of it, he had him pegged as a Mexican, thinking the Los Muertos had caught up to him. But the way he had carried himself reminded him of a soldier, the cool composure of an expert operator. By the time the agents came flooding into the warehouse, he had been ready. He'd closed the distance between them before their guns could clear leather. He'd grabbed the man and thrown him into a chokehold, digging his six-gun into the side of his head. McCree had been a lanky thing in the flower of his youth. But in the heat of the moment it hadn't occurred to him as strange that he'd been able to overpower the man. After all, holding a gun to someone's head made a man feel powerful, tended to blind you from such thoughts, as he would later find Reyes was very well aware of. He'd shouted somesuch nonsense at the agents, something about them dropping their guns or he'd paint the room with the man. He'd whispered to him after, _D_ _on't worry, it's a bluff, I'm not gonna hurt you_ , when the man whispered back _N_ _o, you're not_ , and everything went black, for how long, he couldn't say.

The next thing McCree had known, his face was being ground into the pavement, a dozen agents on top of him, hands cuffed painfully tight behind his back. They'd thrown a bag over his head, and 27 minutes, 5 left turns, 3 rights, and two flights of stairs later, he found himself in some kind of interrogation room. They offered him coffee and he accepted, though he'd never had the drink before or since. Later, he would find out that Reyes had allowed McCree to grab him. Reyes had said he had wanted to see what kind of man he was. It was the same day he had joined Blackwatch, got his badge and his gun. He thought back to the day the man had gifted him his Peacemaker, how he'd popped the cylinder to discover a rolled up ten dollar bill stuffed into the first chamber, the price of an outlaw's funeral, as tradition went. He still kept the bill on him for luck, only this time stuffed into the inside sweatband of his Stetson.

"Reyes was many things," he said, echoing the terse, pained eulogy he had delivered shortly after Reyes's passing. Somehow, it had seemed fitting at the time. If only the man had possessed the good sense God gave a goose to stay dead.

"He was," she admitted. "But he's gone now. And you're here, Jesse. You have to accept that."

"What are you on about?" he asked.

"You were _young_ , Jesse. It was the only life you knew. And you've spent the rest of it trying to atone for something you didn't even do."

"Trying and failing," he admitted quietly.

"Don't say that," she snapped. "Think of all the good we've done all these years." He ignored her.

"You know when Reyes recruited me, I tried to save what friends I had left? One of the conditions of my appointment was I turn rat on my brothers. Give up anything and everything and everyone that could shut the Deadlock Gang down for good. I told him where he could stick his offer, but it turned out Blackwatch was on a recruitment drive, and Reyes gave me the authority to offer my brothers the same deal he had offered me: join them, or spend the rest of your life, natural or otherwise, buried under a jail cell. Know what the nine most terrifying words in the English language are?" he asked, not waiting for her answer. "I'm from the government and I'm here to help. _God_ ," he said, "I really thought I could save them. I rolled into town on my white horse with my little tin star, selling salvation. But all they saw was the real me, the rat. My name was mud, and they'd have rather died than take my offer. So that's what they did. Reyes scattered them to the hills, and they're just a shadow of their former glory."

"They made their choices. Just like you've made yours."

"It's not that simple," he said.

"And why can't it be?" she asked him.

"Because _it can't_ ," he growled. "Goddamnit, it's not how the world is supposed to work. Why the hell do I get to keep living, while everyone else dies? That no matter how many people I kill, I get to wake up every morning with impunity? I know that you feel the same way too, Tracer," he said, and the woman blanched and turned away from him. "How do you do it? How do you make yourself put one foot in front of the other? When there's no point or purpose to any of this?"

"Damn it, there _is_ a purpose, Jesse, who told you anything different? Mine has always been protecting the people I care about. I've failed many times, and bloody hell, I know I'll fail again. But I will _never_ stop trying." She squeezed his arm, his prosthetic arm, a constant reminder of the one Reyes had stolen from him. "There's a reason you're still here. There has to be. I can't—I _won't_ —believe anything less." He pulled away from her, took his hat off in contemplation, running his fingers through his thick, coarse hair.

"Tracer," he said. "Worst-case scenario, what happens if your chronal accelerator gives up the ghost?" The woman was quick to answer, her tone reminding him of Ziegler, nonchalantly rattling off the side-effects of some new and poorly-documented treatment.

"Nothing could happen," she offered tentatively. "Or I could be sent spiraling through time in either direction. I could find myself trapped in some sort of a temporal loop. Or," she supposed, "I could just break time outright. Permanently frozen and all that." Her expression betrayed nothing, an uncharacteristic stillness there on her face that masked her thoughts, of which McCree could only grasp at, like a light switch in a darkened room. He would never truly know what it was to shoulder the curse that was her powers. And at the end of the day, he supposed he never wanted to.

Time wasn't on their side. Even now, what was left of the widow woman's jackboot thugs were gearing up for their final assault on their last known position, likely minutes away. Still, they'd been jawing this long already, and he took a few more precious seconds to form his words, as there was a considerable chance they'd be among his last.

"Tracer … what I'm trying to say is … if I go down in this shootout, I don't want you risking your powers."

"What do you mean?" she blinked.

"You know what I mean," he said.

"I'm not letting you die here," she said. "I'm not going to sit idly by while you throw your life away."

"You said it yourself what could happen if your chronal accelerator completely gives out. This isn't about me, Tracer. Hell, it isn't even just about you. Who knows what kind of havoc that thing could unleash if you tried to use it right now." His words seemed to have an effect on her, though she clearly didn't like what he was saying. "Besides," he said, "I'm not going to do anything stupid. Well," he added, "no more stupid than usual. Scout's honor." She forced a smile.

"Change of plans," she said. "Let me take care of Amélie."

"Lena—"

"No offense to your 'cat-like reflexes,' but we both know there's no way you're going to get the jump on her. I mean, just look at those boots, love."

"What's wrong with my boots?" he asked, offended.

"I'll be the one to sneak up on her. And besides," she admitted with a wink. "I'll need you here on the stairwell, taking care of any unwanted guests." McCree didn't like it. His own chance against the assassin wasn't that great to begin with, but Tracer's? The Widowmaker didn't fight fair, and would exploit any weakness she found with cruelty and extreme prejudice. Going head-to-head with her would require a certain type of person, one who could and would fight just as dirty as her. He knew he _would_ kill her without hesitation if it came down to it—but could Lena?

"She's _dangerous_ , Tracer." His protest would be cut short. Outside, there on the streets emerged a formation of Talon soldiers, what looked like a dozen of them in total, heavily armed, advancing on the High Side Bar.

"So am I," she answered. "Now hand me the fire extinguisher."

…

McCree supposed he'd never seen Tracer as miserable as she was in that moment, covered from head-to-toe is quick-reacting CO2 foam. He felt almost guilty watching her shiver violently, swearing like some sort of possessed snowman.

"Are you alright?" he asked, setting the spent fire extinguisher down by its unused twin. "Can you breathe? This stuff displaces oxygen—did I mention that earlier?" he said, not helping but wincing at the display before him.

"Y-y-y-yesssss," she hissed, shaking like an old prizefighter. "A-and you f-f-failed to m-mention that e-e-earlier."

"Sorry," he said. "Me next." She nodded at him—or rather, he thought she nodded, the woman's head bobbing around like a hula girl's on the dashboard of a 4x4 taking dunes at 60 miles an hour. She angled the head of the other extinguisher towards him.

"R-r-ready?" she asked. As it turned out, it had been a rhetorical question. Before he could say anything, he was doused with what felt like liquid fire. His breath caught in his throat, and his whole body clenched involuntarily. It was all he could do to rotate his body around in order to get an even coat. He found it hard to breathe, as though he wore a blanket of lead. He'd done a pretty good job of covering up his bare skin, but evidently, not good enough, as patches of skin here and there along his arms screamed terribly, then not at all. The left side of his face throbbed deeply now with every heartbeat in a painful rhythm. And to compound it all, Tracer was laughing at him.

 _Misery loves company_ , it seemed.

A glance through the window revealed the sight before them, a line of black-cloaked gunmen advancing in a hard line on the High Side bar. The machine was nowhere to be seen. He watched with baited breath as they breached the perimeter, stepping inside the outermost radius of her explosives.

"B-b-blow it," he said to her. " _N-now_."

For one brief moment, it seemed the sound of the explosion was the only thing that existed in the world.

* * *

Th-th-th-that's all folks! Thanks for reading!


	6. The Short Stop

Hello, everyone! Sorry for the delay, but I'm stuck on a ship in the middle of God's nowhere, with little internet access. But, prospects are looking good, and I'm writing ahead of myself a bit now. I know, I know, you've heard it all before. Also, I'm in a rush to get this posted before I lose internet, so hopefully I've cleaned up any minor spelling or grammartical errors. Otherwise, it might take a few days to fix. Anyways, hope you enjoy.

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Tracer couldn't see the explosion from her vantage point. But she she watched the orange fire bathe over her companion's visage, the face of a man possessed. It worried her deeply, but she said nothing, rising to her tip-toes to steal a glance over his shoulder at the scene below. She counted ten bodies sprawled out on the dirt in front of what used to be the High Side bar, now a smoldering wreck, flames dancing wickedly, like scavengers picking the bones of a fresh kill. To her relief, she watched as some of the bodies began to move, albeit with great difficulty and only to collapse suddenly. Bastion was nowhere to be seen. McCree made a glance back towards her. Even from here, she could feel the sheer heat radiating from the fire below, and it was all she could do not to huddle in and rub her hands together like a vagabond at a dumpster fire.

"If you're doing this, you better get to the roof. It's likely she's already there," he said. "Hell, she may know we're here already." She nodded at him wordlessly, and disappeared into the hallway, McCree staring off through the window, slowly drawing his weapon. As much as she didn't want to leave him alone with his thoughts, she didn't want to see him dead either, which was the likely outcome if their enemies got the drop on them.

This place unnerved her deeply. She couldn't so much as take a step without stumbling onto a rust-brown splotch, a macabre reminder that someone had met a very violent end. It wasn't just the CO2 foam that made her skin crawl, and it was no wonder the place made him so uncomfortable. The roof was only a floor up, accessible by a staircase at the far end of the hallway. An idea struck her as she went. She glanced out a broken window where dust had accumulated in a large drift, and spied it—an iron latticework fire escape on the opposite side of the building. She knew from experience just how cunning Amélie—The Widowmaker—was, and had experienced firststhand her deadly venom mines. It was more than likely she had primed the door to the roof with one just in case, ensuring no one would get the surprise on her. But now, delicately edging out the window and looking at the fire escape, she began to wonder if the nastiest surprise would be of her own making.

The fire escape had become partially unhinged, dangling precariously over the ground below. Normally, she wouldn't have thought twice about it, clambering up it as fast as she could, using her powers to rewind the clock if the wrought-iron structure collapsed. But now, time wasn't on her side. She took a tentative step out onto the platform, which groaned in strain. It was far from safe, but given the circumstances, it would have to do. She climbed upwards, the now considerable wind outside seeming to carve right through her. Her body fought her as she went, involuntary shivers and spasms at the incredible cold of the foam that clung to her body. The air felt thin, no matter how much of it she breathed in, like it was seeping directly out of her lungs. Her heart lurched deep into her stomach when the structure suddenly pitched to the side and began to list backwards as an anchor became violently unbolted from the building.

She crashed backwards into the railing, watching in horror as one of her machine pistols slid free of its holster and clattered down to the furthest edge of the railing, well beyond her reach. She swore as the metal began to whine, feeling the slow, tugging momentum as the entire fire escape began to pull away from the building. Fearing only seconds until a total collapse, she cleared the last of the steps leading to the roof and lunged towards the edge, managing to grasp it, as the bulk of the structure ripped away, rending a huge, open gash in the wall as it did. The structure stopped just short of falling completely, Tracer watching her pistol dangle precariously at the edge of the railing now, all but lost to her. She pulled herself up and over, landing on the roof as the first bullet struck, blowing out a large chunk of the wooden parapet behind her. She rolled behind the first piece of cover she could find on the sparsely-populated roof, a rusted-out HVAC system that clearly hadn't ran in over a decade.

She tried to catch her breath, which evaded her like a wary, feral cat. Her only pistol was shaking now in her hands due to the incredible chill which gripped her. But it would all be worth it if McCree's plan worked.

 _If it looks stupid, but it works, it ain't stupid_.

"Hey, Amélie!" she cried out. "How many fingers am I holding up?" There was a palpable silence that hung in the air.

"A silly trick," she heard the woman call out from across the rooftop in her thick, French accent. "Amateur hour." Tracer could see the woman now in her mind's eye, rifle trained on her last known position, waiting for her to so much as poke her head out so she could ventilate it. She supposed it possible the woman was lying and tracking her every movement, but she preferred to not entertain that line of thinking. She took a quick survey of the rooftop as best she could, spying a crooked water tower nearly in the center of the roof, supported only by four trestled legs of rotting wood.

"Pff!" she exclaimed. "Then you're going to love this!" Tracer sprang out from behind the HVAC system, spraying a burst of fire towards her, before diving behind a set of brick smokestacks that had began to shift and collapse with neglect. The Widowmaker ducked down behind a ventilation turbine, and Tracer made her move.

Tracer had always been fast, but even she couldn't outrun a bullet. She hit the ground running, laying down another burst of suppressive fire as she nimbly scaled a rusted-over satellite antenna as fast as her scrawny, nimble limbs would take her. She looked up to see the glint of light off the scope of the woman's rifle as she jumped, launching herself as hard as she could against the water tower. She struck the metal basin hard and gripped onto it for dear life as the rotted supports gave out and the tank began to fall. She heard the heavy crack of a rifle, and a jet of foul, dirty water exploded in her face, as a searing pain shot through her right arm. The tank came careening down, and struck the roof with such force that it felt like the whole building shook, Tracer smacking her head against the dull, rough metal, the familiar taste of iron in her mouth as she crashed down. She watched as the metal lid of the basin ruptured, and a tidal wave of stagnant brown water came surging out of the tank towards the Widowmaker. Her eyes were wide as the wave engulfed the woman, and in less time than it took to blink, the woman had completely disappeared off the side of the building.

Tracer rolled off the side of the tank, landing in a heap, and panting heavily. A small puddle of dirty water began to form on the roof now, Tracer watching as most of the foam on her began to dissipate, flowing down a large, gaping fissure that had formed in the center of the roof. Her arm screamed at her in the universal language of pain, and she gripped it to staunch the bleeding. She attempted to raise her pistol, but found the limb heavy and dull. There was no sign of the Widowmaker, save for her abandoned rifle, which stared at her accusingly from across the roof. Almost feeling a twinge of guilt, she hefted it over the side, where it disappeared, her ears tracking it to the ground as best they could.

"Qutting on me that easily, love? I thought we were just starting to have some fun!" she said, whirling around now, eyes trained on everything, nothing. It was a trick of some kind she knew; there was no getting rid of the woman that easy.

Behind her from across the rooftop, she heard the screaming of metal, as the entire building began to rumble under her feet. She nearly collapsed to her knees as the fire escape finally gave loose, and came crashing down to the hard pan dirt below. She turned her attention to the commotion, drawing her weapon. There was a trick of the light behind her now, a wavering shadow in the sunlight. Startled, she whirled around to find the Widowmaker, soaring gracefully through the air, releasing her grapnel at the height of her swing. She landed with an unnatural beauty that was mesmerizing in its deadly grace, casually rolling into a seated firing position, the woman looking somehow bored, pouty. In her hands was Tracer's missing pistol.

" _Bonjour_ ," she purred, the clasps of her visor snapping shut over her face, the orange arachnine bulbs shining in the midday sun. " _I_ _see_ _you_."

The woman held the gun at her shoulder, trained on her from across the rooftop. Lena held the pistol's twin sighted on the woman, her other hand clenching the glancing wound on her arm, which began to feel alien to her, lifeless. The Widowmaker's finger tightened imperceptibly around the trigger of the pilfered weapon. So did Tracer's. _So, this is the end_ , she thought. _Who's going to shoot first_?

The answer had surprised her.

A geyser of bullets erupted from the roof beneath them. Tracer dived to the side as the Widowmaker's rifle barked, a wild shot splitting the air where she had once stood. Her own gun rattled off at the fleeing woman, errant shots pinging harmlessly off the ground. The fire from below continued, shot after shot, chewing through the roof. Tracer curled up into a ball, making herself as small as possible, as a large section of the roof gave out and caved in. She felt the stirring beneath her as the structure weakened, a burst of bullets erupted not an arm's length away from her face, covering her in dust. Through the din of the gunfire, she heard a woman scream. And as the roof finally collapsed underneath her, she realized it was her own voice.

...

...

...

There was a flash of motion, a burst of light and harsh sound that made her groan. It was like she was watching a play unfold from a great distance, two muddled figures dancing together under the spotlight. Only the spotlight, she found, was the sunlight casting down from the giant hole in the roof that she had fallen through. And the two figures weren't dancing, she realized, not in the conventional sense. As her vision focused, she recognized her friend, the hapless cowboy.

And he was fighting for his life.

The machine made a great swing with its arm with enough force behind it to remove a man's head. McCree managed to duck under it and slip behind the Bastion unit. He yelled something to her, but her head was full of wasps, petulant and many in number. It looked like he was trying to fiddle with some bit of errant wiring at the back of the omnic, but he was interrupted, as the Bastion unit made a 180 degree swivel on its hip joint and grabbed him roughly by the throat. She found her voice.

"Bastion, stop!" She pleaded weakly, but if any circuit or subroutine of the omnic heard her, it didn't show.

The Bastion unit flung her friend across the hallway like a discarded, broken toy. She felt her teeth rattle as her friend collided with the wall, and vanished through it into an empty room. She stared at the McCree-shaped hole in the wall, looking for any sign of life that her friend was okay or otherwise in one piece. The silence that followed twisted her stomach into a black knot of fear that nearly made her sick. The Bastion unit was staring at her now, a thin slit of eerie red light bisecting his head, studying her with the detached malice of one who pins insects to strips of cardboard for his collection. He raised a steady machine-gun arm towards her.

 _This is it, Lena_ , she thought, groping for her damaged chronal accelerator. _I_ _won't_ _let_ _it_ _end_ _like_ _this_. The device sparked angrily, hissing at her like an exotic and frighteningly venomous cobra. She swore gravely as the Bastion unit leveled the gun, which _clicked_ empty on a dry chamber. It let out a chirrup as it cocked its head quizzically, studying the appendage before making its first, lurching steps towards her.

It walked side-by-side with the railing, and grabbed a bannister in it's metallic hand as it went. The rotted wood exploded out from under its weight, nearly throwing the unit off balance, and down seven stories. But that would have been too easy. It recovered its balance at the last second as Tracer fiddled with her device to no effect, watching helplessly as the unit advanced on her like a predator wolf, jaws dripping in anticipation of the kill. _This can't be the end_ , she thought. _I have to fix this_. She caught a glimpse of her salvation as the omnic drew nearer.

Just beyond her reach lay her machine pistol, nearly buried under a mound of rubble from the collapsed ceiling. She strained outwards for it, finding her right leg pinned under a pile of wooden boards. She hissed in frustration, the gun just out of her reach. Her wounded arm shrieked in frustration. The Bastion unit was only seconds away now. She gritted her teeth and did her best to dig her leg out, but she wouldn't make it in time, she knew, before the Omnic crushed her in its grasp. Her chronal accelerator belched more sparks in response to her thoughts, damaged to the point of uselessness. She was desperate now, and called out to the omnic in a last-ditch effort to make him break free from the grip of whatever technological wizardry enthralled him. But it was useless, she knew, nothing left of the old Bastion behind that evil red glow. _If_ _I'm_ _going_ _down_ , _I'm_ _going_ _down_ _kicking_ _and_ _swinging_.

The omnic stood before her now like a Greek colossus, towering over her in judgment. It lifted one of its heavy legs in the air, and a shadow fell over her face as she watched helplessly. It seemed as though time seemed to freeze, but she knew from past experience that this was only her imagination. She wanted to look away, but she wouldn't allow herself. She would face this just like she'd faced every challenge in her life. But what she saw made her scream.

Jesse McCree slammed into the side of the omnic, driving his shoulder into its chest. With one of its massive feet off the ground, it didn't take much for the colossal machine to topple over. It crashed through the rotten railings of the stairwell, and began to fall impossibly fast down all seven stories of the building, the sound of the impact like that of a falling star.

Jesse looked at her before he fell.

She watched him vanish over the edge alongside the omnic, her hand extended in a futile gesture to save him. He looked back at her, but there was no fear in his eyes.

He fell.

She dug herself out of the pile, and scrambled to her feet. Her cheeks burned, and she couldn't catch her breath. She stole a glance over the edge and covered her mouth as her voice became raspy and choked. She took the stairs as fast as she could, tripping more than once, ignoring her bruises and skinned knees, as if somehow watching her body struggle from far away.

When she made it to the lobby, it was all she could do to hold back tears.

McCree lay there, mangled. His limbs were twisted at unnatural angles, and bone protruded everywhere, puncturing through his skin like sickly growths. He lay in a pool of his own blood, more blood than should have been possible. He lay intertwined with the disabled Bastion unit, in the crater of wreckage that had formed. The machine's "eye" was cracked, and flashed at regular intervals. _Blue_ , she realized. It made a sad, low warble, almost apologetic, the eye following her. When she heard Jesse wheeze, it was enough to make the tears finally explode from her eyes. He wasn't even shown the mercy of a quick death, lying there, in naked agony, spine shattered, staring off into the nebulous expanse between wakefulness and dreams.

"... _tracer_ …" he gurgled, and she was at his side at once. He shouldn't have been able to speak, but McCree had always been a fighter. His eyes were glazed over, filmy, but she saw the spark there, that fire that had always been inside of him. She gingerly peeled off his glove and took his hand tentatively in her own, but it was a limp, dead thing, and it would never register to him anymore. "... _you were right_ …" he said. " … _hacked_ ... " he finished, and she became aware of the object he held firmly in his prosthetic arm. It was a small cylinder, about the size of an aluminum can, the modular design of the head making it clear it was meant to be plugged into a machine. It seemed to glow in the dim of the lobby, like veins of purple blood pulsing through it. She'd been right all along. She recalled watching him struggle against the omnic, as though trying to rip a piece off its back. The entire fight, she realized, he must have been trying to free Bastion rather than simply kill him. And he'd succeeded.

And now her friend was dying because of her.

"Oh, God," she said. "I'm so sorry, Jesse."

" … _no_ …" he said, and for a moment, she almost made herself believe the twitch of his lip was a smile. " … _peace_ …" he groaned.

But this wasn't peace.

"I'm going to fix this, Jesse," she said, grasping her chronal accelerator so hard that the jagged bits of warped metal sticking out began to slice into her fingers, the blood smearing over the thick casing. It sparked again, and her fingers burned as if squeezing a naked lightbulb. But still she squeezed, her grip on Jesse's hand tightening now in response.

"... **no** …" he said, as he began to choke on his own blood. " **no, no, no, n** —" he managed before he seized violently. His body began to shake and convulse of its own volition, and blood and spittle began to froth at his mouth. She squeezed the accelerator impossibly harder, and the casing began to crunch loudly under her fingertips. The heat was almost unbearable now, scoring her skin until it felt like it was bubbling. Her grip never faltered, as though she were trying to compact a lump of coal into a diamond. All she could think was she'd saved him at the diner, but to what end? For this? So he could die here in agony? Though his hand was still, she felt him immediately as he began to slip through her fingers.

She wept openly when she felt him pass, and it seemed for all the world as though she felt the warmth of a great light wash over her.

* * *

Cliffhangers, right? Okay, so I should be able to finish this tale in one more chapter, then I have some more stuff in the pipeline, including a lewd Christmas story that may kick off a much larger, more expansive story. On a personal note, I have obtained a new phone, and thanks to its ungodly size, I'm actually somewhat comfortable writing on it. Whereas writing on a laptop comes with certain constraints; namely, can anyone see what I'm writing while I work?

Anyways, thank you for reading! Criticism is always welcome. I would like to extend a thank you to Raven the Dragon for pointing out lore issues. As to the subject of Tracer's chronal disassociation, I did take quite a few artistic liberties based on the early lore, as well as my own imagination. This will be evident soon.

Thanks!


	7. You're Gonna Carry That Weight

Hello, everyone! My intention was to close everything out with one mega-chapter, but due to the fact that I will be off the grid for a couple of weeks, and I promised you a more immediate update, I decided to go ahead and post this.

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Jesse McCree awoke screaming, as if falling from a terrible height. He sprang up from the bartop, upending a knock-kneed wooden stool which clattered impossibly loudly, his head swimming now, a fiery lance of pain through his skull, broken images of light and thought and sound like shattered glass underfoot after a particularly heinous car crash. He _had_ to remember. It was the most important thing in the world. He tried grasping at his thoughts, tried to clench them tight in his fist, but they vanished like smoke through his fingers. He probed the recesses of his mind, and found nothing, as if the door to that particular room in the warehouse of his memory hadn't just been painted over—it had never been built. He felt his mind drift away without him, like an untethered sailboat, and suddenly he'd forgotten all about everything he'd meant to remember. Just like that, the thoughts were gone.

He found himself on the floor, bleeding.

His head felt like a cheap piñata, bleeding profusely from a golf ball-sized knot his sticky fingers found on the top-right center of his noggin.

"You okay down there, hun?" called a voice from behind the bar, just a glint of matronly concern buried deep in there somewhere, perhaps wherever great lizards were compressed down into oil. "I know the boys worked you pretty good, but I didn't think it was that bad," she said. The voice belonged to Miss Rita, who worked the High Side most nights. She had just recently crossed over to the wrong side of forty, but she still looked great, as all the boys would swear to in court, provided the cops could make any of the dozens of pending charges against them stick long enough to see them inside a court room. Her hair was streaked with garish red highlights that fought with her dirty blond hair, and she had never been above openly teasing him like a cat may toy with a cornered, helpless mouse, much to his chagrin.

" _That bad_ , woman? They worked me over with a goddamned bat," he said, or attempted to say, the fiery pain in his jaw stopping him immediately, a thousand red-hot needle points boring into his bottom left mandible.

"Ooh," she winced. "Better put some ice on that, hun. They really cleaned your clock, didn't they?"

"And you just let me sleep it off on the countertop," he finally managed, his words an Eastwood half-sneer, half-snarl from the corner of his mouth, a mouth whose architecture, he had come to find, had been reneovated, no less than two teeth missing in action. "Damned decent of ya'," he said, picking himself up off the floor, the head wound making him uneasy, like a newborn foal finding its legs. He struggled over to the bar—but, "scene of the crime," was the more apt description.

As he recalled, he'd been attempting to tie one on earlier, tonight's agenda not sitting right with him. It was a bad play, he knew. He wanted blood just like the rest of the boys, but a public shootout like what Walton had planned could only end in innocent bloodshed. He'd said his piece, but ol' Walt had insisted the plan was perfect, and there'd be no casualties. His friend had been so cocksure, he'd damn near believed him. But as the hour grew nearer, Jesse's conscience had grown three sizes, and he'd decided the only cure for that was to be found in the bottom of a glass.

He was polishing off his fourth beer—he still couldn't make himself acquire the taste for bourbon, a fact that Rita, and her low-cut tanktop, used against him at every available opportunity—when Slim and a Domino brother strolled in through the shuttered doors. They'd taken up the seats opposite him, so that the net effect was they had him at both sides. He'd noted the fact that Slim had strolled in holding a baseball bat all casual-like at his side, but it hadn't seemed of particular import at the time.

"Howdy," he'd drawled, not looking up from his beer. The brother was Chessani, he realized, the bigger, meaner sonofabitch of the pair, more muscle behind all that fat than met the eye. Slim, a rangey, greasy thing like himself, was the only one feeling talkative, it seemed.

"You weren't at the briefing," he said. Jesse liked that word, briefing, thought it sounded all official-like. "Makes some of the boys wonder if you're getting cold feet."

"Sounds me of the boys, huh?" He smiled. _They couldn't just say Walton_. "Well, you tell _some of the boys_ this plan is going to get someone killed."

"That's the idea," Slim said, looking at him like he was an idiot. Maybe he was.

"People. Innocent people for Christ's sake," Jesse said. His stomach began to twist, and not because of the alcohol. "God damnit," he swore, "I can't let this happen."

"You don't have a choice in this, brother," Slim declared. Jesse attempted to rise from his barstool, but his shoulder was suddenly seized by an iron vice that clamped down roughly onto his left shoulder, shoving him into his seat. _Chessani_. "Have a seat," Slim offered smartly.

Jesse suddenly became aware of the bat now, resting between them like a coiled rattler. He became cognizant of his own rattler-fingers coiling around his beer bottle, wondering how good the man's face would look redecorated with it.

"What's with the bat?" He asked finally.

"Ask him," Slim nodded.

Jesse had just begun to tilt his head when the Domino brother caught him in the jaw. Everything seared painfully white, and the last thing he'd seen—maybe he'd imagined it—was the bat coming down on his skull.

The two boys weren't subtle. But they'd knocked his ass in the dirt.

He propped himself up against the bar to keep himself vertical. When the room finally stopped running away from him, he located the clock on the wall, which read 0245. He swore vilely. _There's still time_. His hand went instinctively for his six-shooter, but he found the smokewagon had been skinned already, while he was indisposed. What was he going to do, anyway? Shoot his brothers? _It won't come to that_.

"You feeling alright, hun?" Rita asked. "Need to lie down? Maybe in the back somewhere … ?"

"The sawn-off," he snarled again, using his forearm to wipe away the red spittle from his cheek. "'Neath the counter."

"Oh, Jesse," she declared, "Always business and no pleasure." She made a show of looking pouty—and for a second there, the wrinkles that formed briefly offered up a glimpse at her near future—but complied, bending down in her low-cut top to produce a sawn-off double barrel shotgun. He broke the action, catching the two ejected shells mid-air with quiet dexterity. Satisfied, he shoved them back down the throat, and sealed the action with both hands, ignoring the strong urge to lock it in with a flick of his wrist.

"Shells?" He grimaced.

"That's it, hun. Hadn't gotten around to buying any more lately. Didn't suppose I saw the need to, all you tough bikers drinking here, guns and all."

"Suppose not," he agreed. He looked around the unnervingly empty bar, not seeing what he needed. "Hat," he growled, knowing he was pushing his luck now. The High Side had a strict no-hats policy ("show some damned class," Miss Rita had been heard to say on occasion, unironically), and all headwear was left at the door, with the exception of religious wear, she'd remind you with a wink. The last person that had attempted to abuse that particular loophole ended up taking the window outside.

Come to think of it, she never had gotten around to fixing the second story window.

"They'd tried to take it off the rack," she said, referring to Slim and Chessani. His hat, a beaten-up old thing too big for his head, materialized in her hands. "I wouldn't let them," she added, almost as an afterthought.

"Thank you kindly," he said, and was out the doors.

"I hate to see you leave, but I love watching you go," she called back at him. He shivered involuntarily.

Out of respect, and maybe a little bit of fear, he waited until he was well outside the bar before he clapped it on his head.

He was outside now, ambling down the dirt streets to the Cave-Inn Motel. His steps were lurching and ungraceful, his head still reeling from the attack, everything swirly and somehow far away. The pale, gibbous moon revealed the streets before him, which were fortunately empty at this hour. He could only imagine the sight he made as he shuffled through the streets, a dark silhouette shambling through the night like the risen dead.

He heard his name as if it were carried in on the wind, and he felt a sudden cold grip-seize him by the arm.

He felt a stab of fear in his chest like an icicle through his heart, as he turned to face it, what looked like a woman. She was there, and then she simply wasn't, a ghostly afterimage of impossibly blue light. _Jesse_ , she had called, he was sure of it. But she was gone now. The preternatural cold that had taken him had vanished. He was sure he had seen her there, which frightened him, made him stop dead in his tracks. Perhaps his head wound had done more damage than he had realized.

Those thoughts profited little, and he started moving again.

Walton and the gang would be entering the motel from an old smuggler's tunnel that let out in the basement. It was far too late to catch up to them from where they had started, and he had no intention of simply waltzing in the front door, for fear of alerting the would-be assassins and starting the firefight he was trying to avoid. He slunk around the building, clinging to the shadows, observing most of the lights were out this time of night, save a few scattered rooms.

He found what he was looking for on the back side of the building—a small window on the ground floor that let out into the basement. He glanced around again to be sure no one had seen him, and no alarms and searchlights went off to prove otherwise. The window shattered under the butt of his shotgun, and he crawled in, careful not to slice himself on any of the jagged pieces of glass that were lying in wait for him. He allowed himself to fall in, his heavy boots echoing throughout the oppressively dark room, which was only lit sparsely by whatever moonlight cast through the shattered window. He moved quicker than his night-blind eyes allowed as he began to explore the basement for the secret entrance.

It looked like this section of the basement had become a dumping grounds for whatever junk the hotel had accumulated over the years. Everywhere old, broken-down appliances, rotten packaging crates stuffed with yellowed, crumpled newspapers, rusted bicycles and warped infant-cribs, trash bags of old clothing, soiled burlap sacks of mysterious provenance. Every step he took seemed to trigger some buried land mine of acrid dust that stung his nostrils and made his eyes water.

The junk was so plentiful, he doubted he could see from one end of the room to the other. The place was a fire hazard. He groped for the chain of a lightbulb he saw swaying in the moonlight, and gave it a hopeful tug. Even though he expected nothing, he still found himself somehow disappointed when no light came. He spotted the elevator shaft, which was completely open save for an iron latticework gate that retracted when the elevator platform reached its destination. He felt for a raised panel in the dark, finding a call button for the elevator. He wondered if it even came this far down anymore. He left it, wandering the room before his eyes fully adjusted, nearly stumbling and losing his gun in the dark. He decided it best to spare a few more seconds to adjust.

He felt his senses sharpen to a razor's edge in the darkness as he continued to walk. There, along the back wall, he felt a slight breeze wafting in from behind a dirty woolen blanket that covered the wall. He peeled it back and discovered another iron latticework gate, this one a door leading into the old smuggler's tunnel. The darkness was thick, and his vision died abruptly no more than three feet down the tunnel. The bars of the door were wide enough to shove his arm through, which was swallowed so suddenly by the darkness, it nearly made him recoil out of animal reflex. The hinges seemed good, and what he needed now was a means to bar the door. He searched near the door and found it immediately, a solid length of chain and a heavy Master Lock to complete it. He wrapped it through the bars like a woman would wreath herself in a feather boa, the rattling of chains ungodly loud in the darkness, him wondering how far it carried down the tunnel. He managed to secure the chain and clamped the lock down with a satisfying _click_ , just out of reach from behind the gate, in case one of them managed to produce the key. He would confront them down here at the gates of ruin, steer them off the path they had begun to tred.

He sat down opposite the door, resting the shotgun lazily across his lap. He brought his zippo to life, and produced a pouch of tobacco from inside his coat. He began to roll a cigarette absentmindedly, then shuttered his lighter with another satisfying _clink_. He sat there in the darkness for some time, bathed in only the light of the glowing coal at end of his cigarette.

He felt a presence near him, exactly where, he couldn't say. He pricked up his ears, at first thinking the hotel detective was doing his rounds outside, and had discovered the shattered window. He wished that had been the case. Instead, he heard his name again. It came from no particular direction, sounding far-off and dreamlike. This time, there was a new word, a warning.

" _Stop_!"

His eyes searched the dark of the basement again for the wraith woman, and found nothing. He could almost see her in his mind's eye, something about her uncannily familiar. His head hurt. He was imagining things again. He focused himself on waiting for the party's arrival, trying to prepare some sort of speech and failing, hoping to all hell it wouldn't come down to his shotgun demanding the last word.

As it turned out, he didn't have to wait long.

He watched the light creep along through the iron slats of the gate, an orange ember crawling up through the tunnel. He met them when they all piled up at the gate, the tunnel not wide enough to seat more than four abreast, Walton leading the party of course, sporting a lantern in his hand and a .38 at his hip.

He seemed happy to see him.

"Well, if that ain't a ten-gallon hat on a five-gallon head!" Walton declared as the group sauntered in from out of the darkness of the old smuggler's tunnel and stacked up against the iron bars. Too many of them to count, all of them armed, it went without saying. He spotted Slim and Chessani as they moved up the ranks. If they seemed perturbed about the earlier bar incident, it didn't read on their faces. He took a slow drag on his cigarette, as if inhaling his words from it.

"Walton." He said. "Good to see you."

"Jesse," he beamed, brushing the straw rat's nest of dirty blond hair he never cut out of his face, testing the heavy chain that secured the door. "Fancy runnin' into you here! I don't suppose you've changed your mind?"

"No such luck," he admitted. "In fact, I'm here to put a stop to this whole sordid affair."

Walton smiled now, but there was no warmth behind it.

"Don't be like that, Jesse," he said. "Don't tell me you're sore over that bar fight. I put 'em up to it, in truth. I needed to know where you stood." Slim looked guiltily at Chessani, who seemed oblivious to the man's words, incapable of guilt.

"I'm standing right here, Walton. I can't— _won't_ , he corrected himself—let you do this. You know I don't give a good goddamn about these cartel boys, but this is too public. People are gonna get hurt, Walt. Call this off. We'll find another play. This ain't it."

Walton and the rest of the boys listened to his speech. From the reactions in the crowd, he thought he had gotten through to a few of them, but Walton was as unreadable as he always was.

"I'm sorry you feel that way, Jesse," is what he said, and Jesse knew he meant it. "But this has to be done. Here and now. And if you don't agree with it, you unlock this gate and get the hell out of here."

"You know I can't do that, Walt," he said. "Even if I had the key, I wouldn't give it you. Hell, even if you found a way through that chain, you'd still have to go through me if'n you wanted passage." He tapped on the sawn-off strewn across his lap. Walton sniggered.

"Aw, hell, Jesse. When'd you go and get so dramatic?"

"Turn around," he said. " _Please_."

Walton's eyes became hard and he chewed on his lip.

"Brother," he began, "we have to do this. They killed our boys. You saw what they did to the bodies. I will not let that stand," he barked.

"I know," Jesse said. "I want those cartel assassins as bad as you. But not like this. People are going to get hurt. Just listen to me."

"Listen to _this_ ," Slim said, having worked his way up to the front of the procession, sticking his arm through the bars. The whole room flashed and flashed as if from a lightning storm, and the monstrous roars of a .45 filled the room.

Jesse's body exploded into fire and pain, and he collapsed to the ground. He heard Walton's voice, piercing the din.

"What the hell did you do that for?!" He screamed. He didn't bother to wait for an answer, leveling his pistol on the man.

"It had to be done," Slim spat, his own pistol rising up to meet him. "And if you don't realize that, you don't have the right to be leading the gang!"

Jesse's breathing came hard, ragged. He managed to pick up the sawn-off from the floor, and used it like a crutch to right himself. Chessani's piece met him as he did.

It was like a switch had been flipped.

The entire party turned in on itself, guns everywhere, every which way. Jesse counted no less than five distinct factions that had formed in the chaos. He laughed, blood staining his lips.

"No honor among thieves, huh?" he said, doing his best to hold the sawn-off as steadily as he could, the sheer weight of it growing heavier with every second.

"Drop 'em," Walton growled. There was no way they hadn't heard the gunshot upstairs. Their time was limited, and, like the grains of sand in some board game hourglass, would soon run out. No doubt they were scurrying to figure out just what the hell was going on in the basement. They had minutes now, if that.

"It's over, Walt," he said, the words like passing a stone. "They're comin'. You gotta get out of here." He pressed his hand to his stomach, and when it returned, it was the color of death.

"No, Jesse," he called out, not taking his eyes off Slim. "I'm not leavin' you here to bleed out."

"You ain't got much of a choice, partner," he replied. The party was becoming uneasy now, heads on swivels, eyes darting back and forth between each other, waiting for someone, anyone to make the next move. _Maybe_ _this_ _was_ _the_ _Mexican's_ _play_ _all_ _along_ , he thought. _Make_ _the_ _Deadlock_ _Gang_ _kill_ _itself_.

"ENOUGH!" Walton roared, the unspoken power of authority in his voice. "Everyone clear the hell out of here, 'cept Slim and Chessani," he added. "Get to steppin' before the law gets to us first."

Walton had always been one to inspire loyalty. Hell, Jesse had been drawn to him for that very reason. The guns dropped, save for the four of them. Someone in the back must have evidently brought their own lantern, as the mob trailed out the way they had came.

Slim was the first to break the silence, which shattered like an expensive porcelain vase.

"I didn't have to come down to this," he said—but to Walton, Jesse, or himself, he couldn't say.

"You're right," Walton agreed. "It didn't." He made a show of holstering his .38, never breaking eye contact with the man. Chessani and Slim looked back and forth incredulously, sure it was some kind of trick. Jesse limped over closer to the wrought-iron gate, bracing himself against a pile of boxes. You couldn't have paid him all the money in the world to drop his gun.

"Let me put him down, boss," the wormy man said to Walton, trying to ingratiate himself now. His hands were shaking. "He's clearly working with the Mexicans. He's gonna get us all killed."

"No," Walton said, that familiar gleam in his eye now. "You got yourself killed."

The blade was a silver flash in Walton's hands, a white hot flame that danced through the air. It disappeared several times into Slim's stomach. Chessani whirled in place, shifting his sights off Jesse, but it was too late. The blade sang it deadly song across the man's throat. Arterial spray spurted from the dying men like geysers from hidden wellsprings. Walton turned to him now, soaked in blood like some sort of demon.

"This was my fault," he said. Jesse made a non-committal grunt, not wanting to agree with him. "I should've listened to you," he muttered, an apology from him like extracting teeth.

"Go," Jesse said. "They'll be coming any minute now." He tried to push himself off the boxes on which he leaned, but he found his legs unresponsive and wholly alien to him, like someone had sewn another man's legs on when his head was turned. He hit the ground.

He became aware of Walton now, banging against the gate, hands clenched around the iron bars like a prisoner trying to escape a fire that had begun in his cell. His eyes were wild.

"Jesse, god damnit, hang on!" he said. "I'm gonna get you patched up!"

"No," he said, trying to pick himself off the floor, nearly slipping in his own blood. "You get yourself gone. I gotta make it up top," he said. Walton just looked at him incredulously. "I'm fine," he lied. "Gonna limp on out of here. Meet you at the bar."

"I can't just leave you here, Jesse," he said.

"You can and you will," he answered, breaking out into a coughing fit. He could feel the blood clogging up his throat now, and it seemed like his lungs were hemorrhaging air with every breath. "The boys need you."

"I'm sorry," Walt said, finally.

"Me, too," Jesse said, walking away, having the strong suspicion that was the last of his best friend he'd ever see.

He used the walls for support as he walked, leaving scarlet handprints and a contrail of blood as he made his way. Some part of him understood if he tripped and fell here, he wouldn't get back up. He realized absentmindedly he had dropped his weapon at some point, but it didn't matter. In fact, nothing seemed to really matter anymore. He found himself at the elevator, by accident or design, he couldn't say. A bloody thumbprint smeared the UP button.

He became distantly aware of the rattle-trap elevator as it made its descent. When the cage finally opened before him, he all but fell in. He punched the first button he saw—a star—and pressed his forehead against the cool metal. This time, when the gates opened before him, he did fall, hitting the ground abruptly and unceremoniously.

They surrounded him, dozens of dark figures against the harsh, grating light of the lobby. His body was crawling now, a trail of blood behind him like the passing of a particularly muculent slug. His vision was blurry and unfocused as the shrouded figures advanced on him. He was on his back now. The light was impossibly bright, and he could feel it buzzing down into his bones. The woman was there.

Unlike the others, she was clearly in focus. She was a lanky thing with spikes of black hair coiffed every which way. At first blush, she looked almost brittle, a frail thing to be protected and locked away from the evil that was the world at large. But she was strong, he knew, stronger than him, stronger than all this. She knelt down before him like some kind of angel descending from the skies to deliver him from sin. No one else seemed to notice her. Her name was Lena Oxton, and she was his friend.

"Lena," he said, and the world seemed to vanish around him, as though nothing else existed but this moment. "I did it."

"Oh, Jesse," she said, and he saw there were tears in her giant eyes, somehow green, somehow brown, somehow bigger than the world itself. "What have you done?"

"What I had to," he confessed. "I fixed _everything_."

"But at what cost?" she demanded of him, cradling his head in her lap.

"The one I'm willing to pay," he admitted quietly.

"Yes," she answered, her smile an awful, pained thing. "But I'm not."

"Please," he begged. "I fixed it. I fixed everything. Don't take this away from me."

"I'm sorry, Jesse," she said. The light grew brighter, so bright it practically burned him and he shrank away from it, ashamed. He grabbed at her hand, but she pulled away from him.

" _No_ , _no_ , _no_ ," he pleaded with her now, desperate. "don't do this to me, Lena, I fixed it, I fixed it all, _please_ ," he cried.

" _I'm so sorry, Jesse_ ," was all she could say.

* * *

Well, you can't always get what you want! I have a short denouement to wrap everything up, but consider this my last update for probably two weeks, until I find Internet access again. Thank you so much for reading and inflating my already considerable ego!


	8. Heroes

The final chapter, for your reading pleasure.

* * *

Something was wrong, McCree thought, something deep inside him, as if some vital cog in his inner machinery suddenly ground to halt, and now the engine of his soul began to seize and convulse in an apoplectic fit. It might have felt to him something like déjà vu, in the same way the bite of a mosquito may feel like the bite of a pitbull, but it was all he could do to ignore this sudden, muculent feeling of wrongness as it slithered around inside his stomach. He regained the sense of himself almost too late, wrenching the Bastion unit's arm away at the last possible second.

The sound of gunfire was deafening, and the building seemed to tremble as if the earth itself were trying to dislodge them as a dog might dislodge a particularly blood-fattened tick. The bullets bored through the old roof like a drill through a sheet of ice, spiderweb fissures growing at an alarming rate as lances of harsh sunlight pierced the air. He thought he was screaming now, but all that existed in the universe was the gunfire erupting from the arm of the war machine.

 _And Tracer._

And Tracer, he knew, the woman on the roof fighting for her life, a life likely to be cut short by a stray bullet. He wrenched Bastion's arm away as the bullets continued to thunder from the end of his massive barrel. He held on for dear life, not for his own, no, but for Tracer's, and willing his own mechanical limb to action, he crimped down on the machine's arm as hard as he could. There was a whine of metal bending and warping and the machine hissed at him in its binary language of ones and zeroes, glaring at him hatefully from his devil-red monitor eye.

McCree never heard the roof collapse.

Something struck him in the back of the head, and a great wave of dust and rubble overtook him vengefully, like the God of the Old Testament hitting the cosmic reset button on mankind. He was buried there, strangely content in the way of the man who's gotten it all figured out, as though this were always meant to be his tomb. A hand grabbed him roughly by his poncho and yanked him out of the rubble. He didn't look at the machine, searching the rubble for any sign of life. His blood turned to ice water at the thought that Tracer had fallen all the way down to the lobby. His fists became hard and impossibly heavy, the condensation of a thousand dead stars.

McCree came up swinging, snarling like some crazed mutt that had been cornered in an alley. He'd never needed a reason to fight, never much cared for one, but Tracer became his. He clocked the machine dead in its simulacrum of a face, and it seemed to recoil. He pressed his advantage and drove his elbow down into the joint of the machine's arm, and it buckled, releasing him.

He saw her there, across the hallway, half-buried in detritus. She was hurt.

But, Tracer was alive.

McCree fought the omnic with reckless abandon, dodging blows strong enough to shatter him like glass, while interspersing a few quick strikes of his own, to little effect. He'd used every last bullet earlier in an attempt to take the unit out at the joints, disable it, rather than merely kill it. For Tracer's sake, more than that of his own conscience, he knew. But Bastion units were built tough, and it had proven a fool's errand. He should have put it down cleanly when he had the chance. All he had left now was a single flashbang grenade on his belt. It would do in a pinch as something of a chaff grenade, but the effect would be practically worthless, confusing only the unit's radar systems and not its visuals. He fought with everything he had, but he knew it wouldn't be enough.

And then he spotted it.

The omnic swung crazily at him, rotating on the swivel of its hip joint at a wide angle. McCree caught sight of the object as the omnic swung, a small metallic cylinder crudely wired into the unit's back. It was obviously foreign in nature, the cylinder black as onyx, somehow alive with purple veins of light. He realized at once that Tracer had been right all along—the device was how their enemies had been controlling the omnic.

"Look out!" Tracer screamed from behind him. As if woken from a trance, he ducked under the omnic's heavy backswing, passing overhead like a wrecking ball. "NOW!" Tracer roared. The momentum carried the giant omnic's swing farther than it intended, and the Bastion unit listed precariously to his right. That was when McCree struck, weaving in behind him like a boxer. He grabbed the cylinder and yanked as hard as he could, too hard, falling backwards now as a shower of sparks hissed down at him. The Omnic jerked upright and let out an inhuman wail, collapsing down to its knees, the floorboards groaning in warning. It folded in on itself, sitting there and staring blankly at the floor. When he called out to it, the omnic didn't respond, seemingly have entered some sort of locked down state. He made the calculated risk of ignoring it for the moment, tucking the cylinder into his belt.

"Tracer," he called, limping towards the downed woman. He managed to dig her out of the rubble, and she she smiled at him gratefully. She was wounded, bleeding from a hundred small cuts she'd obtained during the fall, and he saw her arm dangling limply from a glancing wound high on her right arm. "You were right," he said breathlessly. "About Bastion."

"I usually am," she admitted. She seemed to spot her machine pistol over his shoulder, and her eyes suddenly grew wide in terror. "The Widowmaker!" she blurted in realization.

"A keen observation," purred a soft voice from across the room. "But a late one, I fear." McCree whirled around, diving for Tracer's pistol, but a crack of gunfire split the air between them, and a bullet struck the ground no more than two inches in front of his extended fingers. "Not so fast, chéri," she told him, brandishing Tracer's other pistol. Though the woman was covered in dust and blood, it somehow didn't take away from her haughty tone, merely enhancing it. "Kick the weapon away, if you please."

McCree swore, thinking. The woman's finger tightened on the trigger in response, and he complied, kicking the gun away angrily, where it slid between the railings and clattered down to the lobby below. The woman was beside the Bastion unit now, who continued to lay hunched over on the floor, alive but unmoving.

"Ah, how clever," she said admiringly. "I see you've managed to save the omnic, at least, if not yourselves."

"If you're going to kill us, just be done with it already!" Lena snarled at her. The woman laughed, and the unfeeling, wintry sound of it was like the last fleeting warmth of a wounded rabbit bleeding out in the snow.

"Mais oui! In due time, however. In truth, your insolence is so entertaining." Lena grew silent, and the woman smiled terribly. "But again, business. I require the omnic's module back, s'il vous plaît."

McCree half-turned, attempting to conceal the device behind his poncho. This didn't go unnoticed by the widow woman, who tsk-tsk'd and brandished the gun at him like a Catholic schoolteacher with a ruler.

"What do you have there?" she wondered aloud. "Show me. And do it slowly. I'd hate for someone to get hurt."

"You want it?" He asked her, producing the cylinder slowly from its notch in his belt and clutching it closely to his breast. He didn't wait for her answer. "Go get it!" he cried loudly, flinging it out over the chasm, where it sailed away and over the railing.

But the woman was quick.

Her whip shot out faster than heat lightning in the desert and snatched the cylinder from its free-fall. In one quick motion, she'd caught it in her off hand, never once taking her eyes off the pair.

"Pathetic," she pouted, bringing the cylinder to her face now, so she wouldn't have to look away from them. "And now i get to kill you." She spared the quickest of glances towards the device in her hand, and if the woman had been capable of it, McCree was sure she would have screamed. The last thing she saw was McCree diving to protect Tracer with his body.

And then the flashbang grenade went off, and the Widowmaker never saw anything again.

From his position, McCree was protected from the worst of the explosion. But, even he felt the brief surge of heat as the room was painted in light, heard the whip crack of thunder as it filled the empty hallways and corridors of the hotel. It lasted for all of a second, but it seemed to hang in the still air, heavy as looming death.

They found the woman on the floor, alive, but barely. Her face and much of her upper body had been badly burned. Her left hand was a blackened ruin, cauterized at the stumps of phantom digits. Her face was a grisly mess of seared flesh, and he was certain if the expandable arachnine visor she wore were removed, a fair amount of skin would come with it. But she was breathing, and they were alive. He handed the weapon back to Tracer wordlessly, who watched him kneel before the woman's body like a priest administering last rites. He spotted a bulky device on her hip about the size and shape of an ancient walkman. He ripped it off unceremoniously and smashed it between the fingers of his prosthetic arm.

When he tried the communicator again, it was crystal clear.

"—come in, over. McCree, Tracer, I repeat, come in, over" repeated the deep voice, a naked panic creeping through it.

"This is McCree," he drawled into the communicator, not caring anymore about callsigns. "I'm with Tracer. We're wounded," he said, looking at the women now, Tracer with her arm, the Widowmaker on the floor, clinging to life. His own body felt weak and trembled of its own accord, and when he wiped away the remnants of the dirty foam that clung to him, his skin had taken on a corpse-like pallor where it wasn't soaked in red. "And we've captured Bastion and the Widowmaker," he added, as though it made everything okay.

"Roger that," Winston said, and McCree knew he was smiling on the other end of the line. But if he could see the burned woman sprawled out on the floor, Tracer's limp arm, and what was left of McCree's ear, he was sure his friend's smile would quickly sour. "I'm nearly there now, I'm less than two minutes away at my current speed. I can see the fire on the horizon already. I'll put her down near the bar—or what's left of it, I wonder."

"Negative," he said. "We're on the top floor of the Cave-Inn Motel and the roof's caved in," he said, just grasping the appropriateness of the occurrence. "We're going to need you to winch us up, a stretcher for the Widowmaker and a claw harness for the Bastion unit."

"Acknowledged," he said. "Winston, out."

Tracer only spared him the briefest of glances as she paced uncomfortably around the room. Every now and then, she would look guiltily between McCree and the burned woman, as though she were about to become sick. Her eyes held the hint of an accusation, though he suspected she wasn't aware of this. Finally, she spoke.

"Is she going to be okay?" she asked.

"Maybe," he answered. "If we get her to a doctor quick enough." Her condition seemed relatively stable for the moment, and Winston was nearly there now, the ship boasting first aid; bandages and gauze and salves that would undoubtedly prove effective and prolong the life of a woman he wasn't even sure was worth saving. He'd thrown the grenade with the intent it would explode a fair distance away from the woman—though he'd be lying if he said he hadn't foreseen this outcome.

"Just look at her, Jesse," she said, even though her own back was turned away in disgust or guilt. "How did it ever—"

"I did what I had to," he said, not unharshly.

"I'm sorry, Jesse," she said, but there was no warmth behind her words. "I didn't mean to suggest otherwise."

"I'm sure."

"It's just …" she began, turning to face him. "This violence. It's just been so bloody messy." It was this place, he knew, but neglected to say aloud. Deadlock Gorge. It had sunk its vampire teeth into her. She looked somehow gaunt and hollow even now, as if the color had been sucked out of her. And it wasn't all from her wounds. Not the physical ones, anyway.

He took a step towards her, and she didn't retreat from him. He made another.

"Violence is always messy, Lena. Your powers allow you to fix things. But for the rest of us, this—" he said, motioning to the burned woman, "—is our consequence. She made her choices in life, and I've made my own. I would give everything to fix the mistakes I made here. But I can't. I made the wrong choice that day, and now I have to live with it. For however long I got left in this world."

"But you _did_ make the right choice, Jesse!" she pleaded with him. Her hand reached out to touch the surface of her chronal accelerator, which seemed to have become increasingly cracked and warped during the firefight. It took him some time to notice at last it was smeared with blood. "What if I had to make the impossible choice? What if I could only save _you_?"

There was something wrong with her hand, he saw, the way she favored it. Something ignited in the dark recesses of his brain, and now his body wasn't his own. He grabbed her not roughly by the forearm and began to peel the glove off. She resisted, trying to pull away from him, but his grip only tightened.

"You're hurting me," she said now, her voice small and faraway, her pain less of the body and more of the spirit, more of her own doing and less of his.

The glove finally slipped off, revealing the flesh underneath, which was burned and raw, blistered and awful with gouges scored by the twisted metal. He let go of her arm, and she backed away from him until she found a wall and slumped down against it. He looked from her burned hand to her chronal accelerator, and he felt a sudden tightening in his chest seize him. He knew.

 _He knew_.

"What did you do, Lena?" he demanded of her.

"What I had to," she admitted, not looking at him, her large, knowing eyes an unreadable mystery beneath the sanctuary of her goggles.

Strangely, there was no anger within him, merely the absence of something, something vital and beautiful and real that he had been robbed of, left now with only the vague outline of a void he couldn't even begin to describe. His knees became weak, and he allowed himself to fall down beside her, not protesting when her head came to rest on his shoulder.

"Why, Lena?" was all he could manage.

"The world needs heroes," she said, quietly.

* * *

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it, though we did end on a very bittersweet note. I have something of a one-shot planned next that will kick off a new series.


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